PZ 3 ■ ^ 

. 114556 PRICE 25 CENTS. 



NEW YORK: 

STRINGER & TOWNSEND, 2 2 2 BROADWAY. 




BY THfi MOST EMINENT FOREIGN AND AMERICAN WRITERS, 

Published by STRINGER & TOWNSEND, 222 Broadway, New -York 
The Oldest Periodical Establishment in the United States. 


Cheap Editions of Cooper’s Novels, comprising 

the whole of this celebrated writer’s productions, making in 
all sixty four volumes, price 25 cents each volume. A re- 
duction of 20 per cent, to those purchasing the complete 
set. Library Edition, in muslin, of 32 volumes, price 75 
cents a volume. 


Last of the Mohicans. 
Pioneers. 

Deerslayer. 

Path-Finder. 

Prairie. 

Mercedes op Castile 
The Oak Openings. 

Two Admirals. 
Travelling Bachelor. 
Homeward Bound. 

The Chainbearer. 

Afloat and Ashore. 

Home as Found. 

The Crater. 

Headsman. 

Wept op Wish 


.Tack Tier. 

Wing and Wing. 
Red Rover. 
Monikins. 

The Sea Lions. 

lilONEL f.INCOLN. 

Wyandotte. 

Ned Myers. 
Satanstoe. 
Bravo. 

Redskins. 

Heidenmauer. 

Pilot. 

Water Witch. 
Spy. 

Ton-Wish. 


1 00 
50 
50 
50 
50 
50 
50 


50 
a. 25 
50 
50 
25 
25 
25 
1 00 
12 ^ 
25 
25 

1 00 
1 00 
1 00 
1 00 
50 
25 
50 
60 


Dumas’s most Popnlar Novels; — 

The Count of Monte-Christo. 2 vols. 

The Thousand and One Phantoms 
George ; or, The Planter of the Isle of France 

The War of the Women 

Fernande ; or. The Fallen Angel 
Genevieve ; or. The Chevalier of Maison Rouge - 
The Two Dianas - • 

Engene Sne’s most Popular Novels: — 

Mary Lawson (in press) 

Capital Sins : — Pride, Envy, Anger, Madeline 
Matilda ; or, The Memoirs of a Young Woman - 

Mysteries of Paris 

The Salamander 

Female Bluebeard 

Therese Dunoyer 

Mysteries op London. 2 vols. Illustrated 

Colonel de Surville 

Mysteries op the Heath .... 
Temptation - - 

Reynolds’s most Popnlar Novels ; — 

lilFE IN T.ONDON. 2 vols. .... 

Ellen Munroe : a sequel to do. 2 vols. 

Esther de Medina. 2 vols. .... 

The Reformed Highwayman. 2 vols. 

Pope Joan ; or. The Female Pontiff ... 

The Seamstress - - - • 

Faust : a Romance of the Secret Tribunals - 
Wallace ; or. The Hero of Scotland 

Dickens’s last Great Work: — 

David Copperfield, the Younger. With Illustra- 
tions by Cruikshank ..... 

Stories from Household Words, by Dickens. 

“ Lizzy Leigh,” the story of “ A Coal Fire,” “ The 
Miner’s Daughters,” and “ Loaded Dice.” 2 Nos. each 12J 

Mrs. Ellis’s last and most Popnlar Work: — 

Self-Deception ; or, The History of the Human 
Heart. In 2 Parts ..... each 

George Sand’s “Master-Pieces:” — 

CoNsuELO. Four volumes complete in one 
Countess of Rudolstadt : Sequel to Consuelo 

Walter Savage Landor’s Shakspeare Novels; — 

Shakspeare and his Friends ... 50 

The Youth op Shakspeare .... 50 

The Secret Passion 60 

(The three bound in 1 vol., cloth, $2 00.) 

The Brothers Mayhew’s New Work: — 

1851 ; or, The Adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Sand- 
boys, their Son, and Daughter. In Parts, each 

Frank Forester’s far-famed Sporting Scenes: — 

The Warwick Woodlands. New Edition. Illus- 
trated by the Author, Henry Wm. Herbert, Esq. 

Lamartine’s best Novel : — 

Genevieve ; or, Peasant Love and Sorrow 

Jenny Lind “Songster” and “Life:” — 

The Nightingale ; or, Jenny Lind Songster - 
Life op .Tenny Lind. With Steel Portrait - 

Thackeray’s New Story: — 

The Kickleburys on the Rhine. With an Es- 
say on the Thunderer’s Review ( The Times) 

Lever’s Companion to “Charles O’Malley.” — 

Con Cregan, the Irish Gn. Blas. By Lever • 


50 


37i 

60 

60 


12i 


12i 


50 


Cockton’s most Popular Works : — 

The Prince 

The Love Match 

Sylvester Sound, the Somnambulist • 

Ainsworth’s best Novels: — 

The Lancashire Witches .... 

St. J AMES ; or. The Court of Queen Anne 
Miser’s Daughter • , ‘ ‘ „/,aqq* 

.Tames the Second ; or. The Revolution of 1688 

Maxwell’s latest Popnlar Stories:— 

Brian O’Linn; or. Luck is Every Thing. Illustrated 
The Dark Lady of Doona .... 

Douglas Jerrold’s Select Works: — 

St. Giles and St. James. Illustrated 
The Dreamer and Worker . * 

Mary Maturin : a Story of Social Distinctions - 

Lippard’s latest Productions : — 

The Empire City. Complete in 2 Parts - 
Washington and his Men 

Hnmorons and Amusing Works ; — 

Charcoal Sketches, BY Neal. 1st & 2d Series. Ulus. 
The Old Judge. By Sam Slick - - " . , ' 

Christopher Tadpole. Ulus. By Albert Smith 
Tor Hill. By the same Author. Illustrated 
Charles Chesterfield. By Mrs. Trollope. Ulus. 
Mrs. Caudle’s Curtain Lectures 
Jeremiah Saddlebags’ Adventures in the Gold 
Diggings. 100 Comic Engravings 

Nantical Standard Novels: — 

The Cruise of the Midge .... 

Tom Cringle’s Log 

The Ocean Child 

Cruise in a Whale Boat .... 

Useful and Entertaining Works:— 

Twenty-six Years in the Life of an Actor. 2 v 
History of all Christian Sects 
California and its Gold Regions 
Mrs. Ellis’s Housekeeping made Easy - 


CHOICE WORKS, BY THE BEST AUTHORS. 

Light and Darkness. By Mrs. Crowe - 
Wilfred Montressor. With over 50 Ulus. 1 vol 
Eighteen Hundred and Twelve. By Rellstab 
Eva ; or. The Isles of Life and Death. By Maiunn 
Old London Bridge; or. The Days of Henry VIll. 
Richard op York .... 

Adventures of a Medical Student 
The Loves of Paris. Illustrated 
Miranda. By the Author of the “Trapper’s Bride’ 

Ann Grey 

CoRiNNE. By Madame de Stael 
Archibald Werner 
The Orphans of, &c. 

Dermot O’Brian. By H. W. Herbert 
The Black Prophet. By Carleton 
Wat Tyler, the Bondman 
My Peninsular Medal. By an Old Peninsular 
Charity, and its Reward. By Mrs. Snelling 

Mary Buchanan 

Admiral’s Daughter. By Mrs. Mar-sh 
Mr. Dalton’s Legatee, a very Nice Woman - 
Maternal Love : a Novel .... 
Marmaduke Wyvil. By H. W. Herbert 
Courtship and Wedlock .... 

The Peer’s Daughters. By Lady Bulwer - 

The Golden Calf 

Kate in Search op a Husband 

George Barnwell 

Rose Somerville ...... 

George Lovell. By Sheridan Knowles . 

The Old Convents op Paris 
Mysteries op the Criminal Records • 

The First False Step • - . - 

The Bottle ; or. The First Step to Crime 
The Pledge ; or, the First Step to Fortune. 

Bravo’s Daughter ; or, The Tory of Carolina. 
Cleveland. A Tale of the Church 

Lancelot Widge 

The Monk. By I.ewis 

Clement Lorimer; or, The Book with the Iron Clasps 
Charity Sisters and the Deformed 
.Tame Shore : a Romance 

Manuscripts from the Diary op a Physician 
Rody the Rover. By Carleton 
The Two Loves : a Story of New-York 
Three Nights in a Lifetime 
Shipwrecked Gold Seekers : a Tale 
Three Cutters. By Capl. MarryaK 


50 

50 

374 

50 

25 

50 

25 

50 

25 

37 

25 

25 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

371 

50 

25 

25 


50 

50 

25 

25 


75 

37 

50 

124 


50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

50 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 

371 

25 

374 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 

25 












18 5 1 : 


THE ADYENTUEES 

OF 

MR. AND IRS. SANDBOYS, 

THEIR SON AND DAUGHTER, 


WHO CAME UP TO LONDON TO ENJOY THEMSELVES AND TO SEE 


THE GREAT EXHIBITION. 


BY 

HENEY MAYHEW AND GEOEGE CEUIKSHANK. 



NEW YOEK: 

STRINGER AND TOWNSEND, 

222 BROADWAY. 




80T7RCB UNKNOWN 

NOVI 5 1940. i 


/' ! 


I 




' % ■' 
■ ■ 




• • ' I '!• H 


\ 


V 


1851 : 


OR, 

THE ADVENTURES 

OF 

ME. AND MRS. CURSTT SANDBOYS. 


** Come, Nichol, and gi’e us thy cracks, 

I seed le gang down to the smiddy, 

I’ve fodder’d tlie naigs and the nowt, 

And wanted to see thee — ’at did e. 

' Ay, Andrew, lad ! draw in a stuil. 

And gi’e us a shek o’ thy daddle ; 

I got aw the news far and nar, 

Sae set off as fast’s e could waddle.” 

Nichol the Newsmonger . — Robert Anderson. . 


T he great exhibition was about fo attract the sight-seers 
of all the world — the sight-seers, 'who make up nine-tenths of 
the human family. The African had mounted his ostrich. The Crisp 
of the Desert had announced an excui-sion caravan from Zoolu to 
Fez. The Yakutskian Shillibeer had already started the first rein- 
deer omnibus to Novogorod. Penny cargoes were steaming down Old 
Nile, in Egyptian “ Daylights and “ Moonlights,” while floating 
from the Punjaub, and congregating down the Indus, Scindian 
“ Bridesmaids ” and “ Bachelors ” came racing up the Red Sea, with 
Burmese “Watermen, Nos. 9 and 12,” calling at the piers of Muscat 
and Aden, to pick up passengers for the Isthmus — at two-pence 
a head. 

The Esquimaux had just purchased his new “ registered paletot” of 
seal-skin from the great “sweater” of the Arctic Regions. The 
Hottentot Venus had already added to the graceful ebullitions of 
nature, the charms of a Parisian crinoline . The Yemassee was busy 
blueing his cheeks with the rouge of the backwoods. The Truefit of 
New Zealand had dressed the full buzz wig, and cut and curled the 
horn of the chief of the Papuas. The Botocudo had ordered a new 
pair of wooden ear-rings. The Maripoosan had japanned his teeth with 
the best Brunswick Black Odonto. The Cingalese was hard at work 
with a Kajydor of Cocoa-Nut-Oil, polishing himself up like a boot; 
and the King of Dahomey — an ebony Adam — in nankeen gaiters 

1 




uz. 


4 


1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF 


and epaulets, was wending Hs way towards London to tender his 
congratulations to the Prince Consort. 

Nor was the commotion confined alone to the extremes of the 
world — the metropolis of Great Britain was also in a prodigious 
excitement. Alexis Soyer was preparing to open a restaurant 
of all nations, where the universe might dine, from sixpence to a 
hundred guineas, off cartes ranging from pickled whelks to nightin- 
gales’ tongues — from the rats a la Tartare of the Chinese, to the 
“ turkey and truffles ” of the Parisian gourmand — from the “ long 
sixes, au naturel^^ of the Russian, to the “ stewed Missionary of the 
Marquesas,” or the “ cold roast Bishop ” of New Zealand. Here, 
too, was to be a park with Swiss cottages, wherein the sober Turk 
might quaff his Dublin stout ; and Chinese pagodas, from whose 
golden galleries the poor German student, dreaming of the undis- 
coverable noumena of Kant, might smoke his penny Pickwick, sip 
his Arabian chicory, and in a fit of absence, think of his father-land 
and pocket the sugar. 

St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey (“in consequence of the increased 
demand ”) were about to double their prices of admission, when 
M. JuLLiEN, “ ever ready to deserve the patronage of a discerning 
public,” made the two great English cathedrals so tempting an offer 
that they “did not think themselves justified in refusing it.” And 
there, on alternate nights, were shortly to be exhibited, to admiring 
millions, the crystal curtain, the stained glass windows illuminated 
with gas, and the statues lighted up with rose-coloured lamps; the 
“Black? Band of his Majesty of Tsjaddi, with a hundred additional 
bones the monster Jew’s harp ; the Euhurdy-gurdychon ; the 
Musicians of Tongoose ; the Singei-s of the Maldives ; the Glee Minstrels 
of Paraguay ; the Troubadours of far Vancouver ; the Snow Ball 
Family from the Gold Coast ; the Canary of the Samoides ; the The- 
ban Brothers ; and, “ expressly engaged for the occasion,” the cele- 
brated Band of Robbers from the Desert. 

Barnum, too, had “thrown up ” Jenny Lind, and entered into an 
agi*eement with the Poor Law Commissioners to pay the Poor Rates 
of all England during one year for the sole possession of Somereet 
House, as a “ Grand Hotel for all Nations,” under the highly explana- 
tory title of the “ Xenodokeion Pancosmopolitanicon ;” where each 
guest was to be provided with a bed, boudoir, and banquet, together 
with one hour’s use per diem of a valet, and a private chaplain 
(according to the religious opinions of the individual) ; the privilege 
of free admission to all the theatres and green-rooms ; the right of 
entree to the Privy Council and the Palace ; a knife and fork, and 
spittoon at pleasure, at the tables of the nobility ; a seat with night- 
cap and pillow in the House of Commons, and a cigar on the Bench 
with the Judges ; the free use of the columns of “ The Times'’' news- 
paper, and the right of abusing therein their friends and hosts of the 
day before ; the privilege of paying visits in the Lord Mayor’s state- 
carriage (with the freedom of the City of London), and of using the 
Goldsmiths’ state barge for aquatic excui-sions ; and finally, the 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


5 


full right of presentation at the Drawing-room to her most gracious 
Majesty, and of investiture with the Order of the Garter at discretion, 
as well as the prerogative of sitting down, once a week, in rotation, at 
the dinner table of His Excellency General Tom-Thumb. These 
advantages, Mr. Barnum, to use his own language, had “determined 
upon oftbring to a generous and enlightened American public at one 
shilling per head per day — numbei-s alone enabling him to complete 
his engagements.” 

While these gigantic preparations for the gratification of foreign 
vdsitoi's were being made, the whole of the British Provinces likewise 
were prepaiing extensively to enjoy themselves. Every city was 
arranging some “monster train” to shoot the whole of its inhabit- 
ants, at a halfpenny per ton, into the lodging-houses of London. All 
the houses of York were on tiptoe, in the hope of shaking hands in 
Hyde Park with all the houses of Lancaster. Beds, Bucks, Notts, Wilts, 
Hants, Hunts, and Herts were respectively cramming their carpet bags 
in anticipation of “ a week in London.” Not a village, a hamlet, a 
borough, a township, or a wick, but had each its shilling club, for pro- 
viding their inhabitants with a three days’ journey to London, a 
mattress under the dry arches of the Adelphi, and tickets for soup 
ad libitum. John-o’-Groat’s was anxiously looking forward to the 
time when he w^as to clutch the Land’s End to his bosom, — the Isle 
of Man w'as panting to take the Isle of Dog’s by the hand, and wel- 
come Thane t, Sheppy, and Skye to the gaieties of a London life, — 
the North Foreland was preparing for a friendly stroll up Eegent- 
street with Holy-Head on his arm, — and the man at Eddystone Light- 
house could see the distant glimmer of a hope of shortly setting eyes 
upon the long looked for Buoy at the Nore. 

Bradshaw’s Railway Guide had swelled into an encyclopaedia, and 
Masters and Bacheloi-s of Arts “ who had taken distinguished degi’ees,” 
were daily advertising, to perfect pei-sons in the understanding of the 
Time Tables, in six easy lessons for one guinea. Omnibus conductors 
were undergoing a Polyglott course on the Hamiltonian system, to 
enable them to abuse all foreignei-s in their native tongues ; the 
“ Atlases ” were being made extra strong, so that they might be able 
to bear the whole world on top of them ; and the proprietor of the 
Camberwell and Camden Town ’Busses were eagerly watching for the 
time when English, French, Prussians, and Belgians, should join their 
Wellingtons and Bluchers on the heights of “ Waterloo I” 

Such was the state of the world, the continent, the provinces, and 
the metropolis. Nor was the pulse that beat so throbbingly at Ber- 
mondsey, Bow, Bayswater, Brixton, Brompton, Brentford, and Black- 
heath, without a response on the banks of Crummock Water and the 
tranquil meadows of Buttei-mere. 

He, who has passed all his life amid the chaffering of Cheapside, or 
the ceaseless toil of Bethnal Green, or the luxurious ease of BelgTavia, 
— who has seen no mountain higher than Saffi’on Hill, — has stood 
beside no waters purer than the Thames, — whose eye has rested upon no 


6 


1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF 


spot more green than the ihclosure of Leicester Squai’e, — who knows 
no people more primitive than the quaker corn-factors of Mark Lane, 
and nothing more truthful than the “ impartial inquiries ” of the Morn- 
ing Chronicle^ or more kind-hearted than the writings of The Econo- 
mist, — who has drunk of no philosophy deeper than that of the 
Penny Cyclopoedia, — who has felt no quietude other than that of 
the City on a Sunday, — sighed for no home but that which he can 
reach for “ threepence all the way,” and wished for no last resting- 
place but a dry vault and a stucco cenotaph in the theatrical Golgothas 
of Kensal and of Highgate ; — such a man can form no image of the 
peace, the simplicity, the truth, and the beauty which aggi’egate into 
the perpetual Sabbath that hallows the seclusion about and around 
the Lake of Buttermere. 

Here the knock of the dun never startles the hermit or the student 
— for (thrice blessed spot!) there are no knockers. Here are no 
bills, to make one dread the coming of the spring, or the summer, 
or the Christmas, or whatever other “ festive ” season they may fall due 
upon, for (0 earthly paradise !) there are no tradesmen, and — better 
still — no discounters, and — greater boon than all — no 1 not one attor- 
ney within nine statute miles of mountain, fell, and morass, to ruffle 
the serenity of the village inn. Here that sure-revolving tax-gatherer 
— as inevitable and cruel as the Fate in a Grecian tragedy — never comes, 
with long book and short inkhorn, to convince us it is Lady-Day — nor 
“ Paving,” nor “ Lighting,” nor “ Water,” nor “ Sewers,” nor “ Poor’s,” 
nor “ Parochials,” nor “ Church,” nor “ County,” nor “ Queen’s,” nor any 
other accui’sed accompaniment of our boasted civilivation. Here 
are no dinner-parties for the publication of plate ; no soirees for the 
exhibition of great acquaintances ; no conversaziones for the display 
of your wisdom, with the full right of boring your friends with your pet 
theories ; nor polkas, nor schottisches, nor Cellarii, for inflaming 
young heirs into matrimony. Here there are no newspapers at break- 
fast to stir up your early bile with a grievance, or to render the 
merchant’s morning meal indigestible with the list of bankrupts, or 
startle the fundholder with a sense that all security for property is 
at an end. Here there are no easy-chair philosophers, — not particu- 
larly illustrious themselves for a delight in hard labor, — ^to teach us 
to “sweep all who will not work into the dust-bin.” Here, too, there 
are no Harmonic Coalholes, or Cyder ‘ Cellars, nor Choreographic 
Casinos, or Cremornes, or other such night-colleges for youth, where 
ethics are taught from professional chairs occupied by “ rapid ” publi- 
cans, or by superannuated melodists, with songs as old as themselves, 
and as dirty as their linen. 

No ! According to a statistical investigation recently instituted, to the 
great alarm of the inhabitants, there were, at the beginning of the ever- 
to-be-remembered year 1851, in the little village situate between the 
Lakes of Crummock and Buttermere, fifteen inhabited houses, one unin- . 
habited, and one church about the size of a cottage ; and within three 
miles of these, in any direction, there was no other habitation what- 
soever. This little cluster of houses constituted the village called 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


7 


Buttermere, and consisted of four farm-houses, seven cottages, two 
Squires’ residences, and two Inns. 

The census of the nine families who resided in the fifteen houses 
of Buttermere — for many of these same families were the sons and 
nephew's of the elders — was both curious and interesting. There 
w’ere the Flemings, the Nelsons, the Cowmans, the Clarks, the Riggs, 
the Lancasters, the Branthwaites, the Lightfoots — and The Jopson, 
the warm-hearted Bachelor Squii’e of the place. The remaining Squire 
— also, be it said, a Bachelor — had left, when but a stripling, the cool 
shades of the peaceful vale for the wai’s of India. His name was but 
as a shadow on the memory of the inhabitants ; once he had returned 
with — so the story ran — “ an Arabian horee but, “ his wanderings 
not being over,” as his old housekeeper worded it, with a grave shake 
of her deep-frilled cap, he had gone back “f hot country with Sir 
Henry Hardinge to fight t’ Sikhs,” promising to return again and end 
his days beside his native lake of Buttermere. 

Of the families above cited, two were related by marriage. The 
Clarks had w'edded with the Riggs, and the Cow'mans with the Light- 
foots, so that, in reality, the nine .were but seven; and, strange to 
say, only one of these, the Clarks, were native to the place. It 
was curious to trace the causes that had brought the other settlers 
to so sequestered a spot. The greatest distance, however, that any of 
the immigrants had come from was thirty miles, and some had travelled 
but three ; and yet, after five-and-tw'enty years’ residence, were spoken 
of by the aboriginal nativ'es as “foreigners.” 

Only one family — Buttermere born — had been known to emigrate, 
and they had been led off, like the farmers who had immigrated, by 
the lure of more fertile or more profitable tenancies. Three, however, 
had become extinct ; but tw'o in name only, having been absorbed by 
marriage of their heiresses, while the other one — the most celebrated 
of all — was utterly lost, except in tradition, to the place. This was 
the family of Mary Robinson, the innkeeper’s daughter, and the 
renowned Beauty of Buttermere, known as the lovely, simple-hearted 
peasant girl, trapped by the dashing forger into marriage, widowed by 
the hangman, amidst a nation’s tears, and yet — must we write it — 
not dying broken-hearted, — but — alas for the romance and constancy 
of the sex ! — remarried ere long to a comfortable farmer, and ending 
her days, the stout, well-to-do mother of seven bouncing boys and 
girls. 

Mr. Thornton, the eminent populationist, has convinced every 
thinking mind, that, in order that the increase of the people may 
be duly regulated, every husband and wife throughout the country 
should have only one child and a quarter. In Buttermere, alas ! (we 
almost weep as we announce the much-to-be-regretted fact) there are 
seventeen parents and twenty-nine children, which is at the frightful 
rate of one child and three quarters and a fraction, to each husband 
and wife ! 

Within the last ten years, too, Buttermere has seen, unappalled, 
three marriages and nine births. The marriages were all with maids 


8 


1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF 


of the inn, where the memory of Mary Eobinson still sheds a tra- 
ditionary grace over each new chambermaid, and village swains, 
bewitched by the association, coihe annually to provide themselves 
with “ Beauties.” 

The deaths of Buttermere tell each their peculiar story. Of the 
seven who have passed away since the year 1840, one was an old man 
who had seen the snow for eighty winters lie upon Red Pike ; another 
was little Mary Clarke, who for eight years only had frolicked in the 
sunshine of the happy valley. Two were brothers, working at the 
slate-quarries high up on Ilonister Craig : one had fallen from a ladder 
down the precipice side — the other, a tall and stalwart man, had, in 
the presence of his two boys, been carried up bodily into the air by a 
whirlwind, and dashed to death on the craigs below. Of the rest, one 
died of typhus fever, and another, stricken with the same disease, w’as 
brought, at his special request, from a distance of twenty -one miles, 
to end his days in his mountain-home. The last, a young girl of 
twenty, perished by her own hand — the romance of village life ! 
Mary Lightfoot, wooed by her young master, the farmer’s son, of ' 
Gatesgarth, sat till morning awaiting his return fi'om Keswick, whither 
he had gone to court another. Through the long, lone night, the 
misgivings of her heart had grown by daylight into certainty. The 
false youth came back with other kisses on his lip, and angry words 
for her. Life lost its charm for Mary, and she could see no peace but 
in the grave.^ 

Nor are the other social facts of Buttermere less interesting. 

According to a return obtained by two gentlemen, who represented 
themselves as members of the London Statistical Society, and who, 
after a week’s enthusiasm and hearty feeding at the Fish Inn, sud- 
denly disappeared, leaving behind them the Occupation Abstract of 
the inhabitants and a geological hammer, — according to these gentle- 
men, we repeat, the seventy-two Buttermerians may be distributed as 
follows : two innkeepers, four farmer's (including one statesman and 
one sinecure constable), nine labourers (one . of them a miner, one a 
quarrier, and one the parish-clerk), twelve farm-servants, seventeen 

* The custom of night courtship is peculiar to the county of Cumberland and some 
of the districts of South Wales. The following note, explanatory of the circum- 
stance, is taken from the last edition of “ The Cumberland Ballads of Robert 
Anderson,” a work to be found, well thumbed, in the pocket of every Cumbrian 
peasant-girl and mountain shepherd : — A Cumbrian peasant pays his addresses to 
his sweetheart during the silence and solemnity of midnight. Anticipating her 
kindness, he will travel ten or twelve miles, over hills, bogs, moors, and morasses, 
undiscouraged by the length of the road, the darkness of the night, or the intem- 
perance of the weather ; on reaching her habitation he gives a gentle tap at the 
window of her chamber, at which signal she immediately rises, dresses herself, and 
proceeds with all possible silence to the door, which she gently opens, lest a 
creaking hinge or a barking dog should awaken the family. On his entrance into 
the kitchen, the luxuries of a Cumbrian cottage — cream and sugared curds — are 
placed before him ; next the courtship commences, previously to which the fire 
is darkened and extinguished, lest its light should guide to the window some idle or 
licentious eye ; in this dark and uncomfortable situation (at least uncomfortable to 
all but lovers), they remain till the advance of day, depositing in each other’s 
bosoms the secrets of love, and making vows of unalterable affection.” 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


9 


SODS, nine daughters, fourteen wives, three widows, one ’squire, and one 
pauper of eighty-six years of age. 

“ But,” says the Pudding-Lane reader, “ if this he the entire com- 
munit)', how do the people live? where are the shops? where that 
glorious interchange of commodities, without which society cannot 
exist? Where do they get their bread — their meat — their tea — their 
sugar — their clothing — their shoes? If ill, what becomes of them? 
Their children, where are they taught? Their money, where is it 
deposited ? Their lettei*s ? — for surely they cannot be cut off from all 
civilization by the utter absence of post-office and postman! Are 
they beyond the realms of justice, that no attorney is numbered 
amongst their population ? They have a constable — where, then, 
the magistrate ? They have a parish-clerk — then where the clergy- 
man ?” 

Alas I reader, the picturesque is seldom associated with the con- 
veniencies or luxuries of life. W^ash the peasant-giiTs face and bando- 
line her hair, she proves but a bad vignette for that most unpicturesque 
of books — the Book of Beauty. Whitewash the ruins, and make them 
comfortable ; what artist would waste his pencils upon them ? So is 
it with Buttermere : there the traveller will find no butcher, no baker, 
no grocer, no draper, no bookseller, no pawnbroker, no street-musi- 
cians, no confectionei’s, and no criminals. Bui’st your pantaloons — 
O mountain tourist I — and it is five miles to the nearest tailor. 
Wear the sole of your shoe to the bone on the sharp craigs of Robinson 
or of the Goat-gills, and you must walk to Lowes Water for a shoe- 
maker. Be mad with the toothache, caught from continued exposure 
to the mountain breeze, and, go which way you will — to Keswick 
or to Cockermouth — ^it is ten miles to the nearest chemist. Be 
seized with the pangs of death, and you must send twenty miles, 
there and back, for Dr. Johnson to ease your last moments. To 
apprise your friends by letter of your danger, a messenger must go 
six miles before the letter can be posted. If you desire to do your 
duty to those you may leave behind, you must send three leagues to 
Messrs. Brag and Steal to make your will, and they must travel the 
same distance before either can perform the office for you. You wish 
to avail yourself of the last consolations of the Church ; the clergy- 
man, who oscillates in his duties between Withorp and Buttermere (an 
interval of twelve miles), has, perhaps, just been sent for to visit the 
opposite parish, and is now going, at a hard gallop, in the contrary 
direction, to another parishioner. Die ! and you must be taken five 
miles in a cart to be buried ; for though Buttermere boasts a church, it 
stands upon a rock, from which no sexton has yet been found hardy 
enough to quaiTy out a grave 1 

But these are the mere dull, dry matters of fact of Buttermere — 
the prose of its poetry. The ciphers tell us nothing of the men or 
their mountains. We might as well be walking in the Valley of Dry 
Bones, with Maculloch, Porter, Magregor, or the Editor of the 
Economist, for our guides. Such teachers strip all fife of its emotions, 
and dress the earth in one quaker’s suit of drab. All they know of 


10 


1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OP 


beauty is, that it does not belong to the utilities of life — ^feeling with 
them is merely the source of prejudice — and everything that refines 
or dignifies humanity, is by such men regarded as sentimentalism or 
rodomontade. 

And yet, the man who could visit Buttermere without a sense of 
the sublimity and the beauty which encompass him on every side, 
must be indeed dead to the higher enjoyments of life. Here, the 
mountains heave like the billows of the land, telling of the storm that 
swept across the earth before man was on it. Here, deep in their 
huge bowl of hills, lie the grey-green waters of Crummock and of 
Buttermere, tinted with the hues of the sloping fells around them, 
as if the mountain dyes had trickled into their streams. Look which 
way you will, the view is blocked in by giant cliffs. Far at the end 
stands a mighty mound of rocks, umber with the shadows of the 
masses of cloud that seem to rest upon its jagged tops, while the 
haze of the distance hangs about it like a bloom. On the one side 
and in front of this rise the peaks of High Craig, High Stile, and Red 
Pike, far up into the air, breaking the clouds as they pass, and the 
white mists circling and wreathing round their warted tops, save 
where the blue sky peeps brightly between them and the sun behind 
streams between the peaks, gilding every craig. The rays go slanting 
down towards the lake, leaving the steep mountain sides bathed in a 
rich dark shadow — while the watere belovv, here dance in the light, 
sparkling and shimmering, like scales of a fish, and there, swept by 
the sudden gust, the spray of their tiny waves is borne along the 
surface in a powdery shower. Here the steep sloping sides are 
yellow-green with the stinted verdure, spotted red, like rust, with the 
withered fern, or tufted over with the dark green furze. High up, 
the bare, ash-grey rocks thrust themselves through the sides, like 
the bones of the meagre Earth. The brown slopes of the more 
barren craigs are scored and gashed across with black furrows, show- 
ing the course of dried-up torrents ; while in another place, the 
mountain stream comes leaping down from craig to craig, whitening 
the hill-side as with wreaths of snow, and telling of the “ tarn” which 
lies silent and dark above it, deep buried in the bosom of the moun- 
tain. Beside this, climbs a Wood, feathering the mountain sides, and 
yet so lost in the immensity that every tree seems but a blade of fern. 
Then as you turn round to gaze upon the hills behind you, and bend 
your head far back to catch the Moss’s highest craigs, you see blocks 
and blocks of stone tumbled one over the other, in a disorder that 
fills and confounds the mind, with trees jutting from their fissures, 
and twisting their bare roots under the huge stones, like cords to 
lash them to their places ; while the mountain sheep, red with ruddle, 
stands perched on some overhanging craig, nipping the scanty herb- 
age. And here, as you look over the tops of Hassness Wood, you 
see the blue smoke of the unseen cottage curling lightly up into the 
air, and blending itself with the bloom of the distant mountains. 
Then, as you journey on, you hear the mountain streams, now trick- 
ing softly down the sides, now hoarsely rushing down a rocky bed, 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


11 


and now, in gentle and harmonious hum, vying with the breeze as it 
comes sighing down the valley. 

Central between the Waters, and nestling in its mountains, lies the 
httle village of Buttermere, like a babe in its mother’s lap. Scarce 
half-a-dozen houses, huddled together like sheep for mutual shelter 
from the storm, make up the humble mountain home. On each side, 
in straggling order, perched up in the hill-side nooks, the other dwell- 
ing's group themselves about it. In the centre stands the unpretend- 
ing village inn. Behind .it stretch the rich, smooth, and velvety 
meadows, spotted with red cattle, and looking doubly green and soft 
and level, from the rugged, brown, and barren mountains, that rise 
abrupt upon them. To stand in these fields, separating as they do 
the twin waters, is, as it were, to plant the foot upon the solid lake, 
and seem to float upon some verdant raft. High on the rock, front- 
ing the humble inn, stands sideways the little church, smaller than 
the smallest cottage, with its two bells in tiny belfry crowning its 
gable end, and backed by the distant mountain that shows through 
the opening pass made by the hill on whose foot it rests. Bound 
and about it circles the road, in its descent towards the homesteads 
that are grey with the stone, and their roofs green with the slate of 
their native hills, harmonious in every tint and shade with all around 
them. Beside the bridge spanning the angry brook which hurries 
brawling round the blocks of stone that intercept its course, stands 
the other and still more humble inn, half clad in ivy, and hiding the 
black arch through which the mountain “ beck,” white with foam, 
comes dashing round the turn. 

In the village road, for street there is none, not a creature is to be 
seen, save where a few brown or mottled “ short-horns ” straggle up 
from the meadows, — now stopping to stare vacantly about them, now 
capering purposeless with uplifted tails, or butting frolicsome at each 
other ; then marching to the brook, and standing knee-deep in the 
scurrying waters, with their brown heads bent down to drink, and 
the rapid current curling white around their legs, while others go 
leaping through the stream, splashing the waters in transparent sheets 
about them. Not a fowl is to be seen scratching at the soil, nor duck 
waddling pompously toward the stream. Not even a stray dog crosses 
the roadway, unless it be on the Sunday, and then every peasant or 
farmer who ascends the road has his sharp-nosed, shaggy sheep-dog 
following at his heels, and vying with his master in the enjoyment 
of their mutual holiday. Here, too, ofttimes may be seen some aged 
dame, with large white cap, and bright red kerchief pinned across 
her bosom, stooping to dip her pail into the brook ; while over the 
bridge, just showing above the coping-stone, appears the grey- 
coated farmer, with drab hat, and mounted on his shaggy brown 
pony, on his way to the neighbouring market. Here, too, the 
visitor may, sometimes, see the farmers’ wives grouped outride one 
of the homestead gates — watching their little lasses set foith on 
their five-mile pilgrimage to school, their baskets filled with their 
week’s provisions hanging on their arms, and the hoods of their 


12 1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF 

blue-grey cloaks dancing as they skip playfully along, thoughtless of 
the six days’ absence, or mountain road before them. At other times, 
some good-wife, or ruddy servant-gii‘1, sallies briskly from the neigh- 
bouring farm, and dodges across the road the truant pig that has 
dashed boldly from the midden. Anon, climbing the mountain side, 
saunters some low-built empty cart, with white horse, and grey-coated 
carter, now, as it winds up the road, hidden by the church, now disap- 
pearing in the circling of the path behind the slope, then seen high 
above the little belfry, and hanging, as it were, by the hill side, as the 
carter pauses to talk with the pedlar, who, half buried in his pack, 
descends the mountain on his way to the village. Then, again 
ascending, goes the cart, higher and higher, till it reach the highest 
platform, to vanish behind the mountain altogether from the sight. 

Such, reader, is a faint pen and ink sketch of a few of the charms 
and rural graces of Buttermere. That many come to see, and but few 
to appreciate them, the visitors’ book of the principal inn may be cited 
as unquestionable evidence. Such a book in such a scene one^ would 
expect to find filled with sentiments approximating to refinement, at least, 
if not to poetry ; but the mountains here seem more strongly to affect 
the appetite of Southerners than their imaginations, as vntness the under- 
written, which are cited in all their bare and gross literality. 

“ Messrs. Bolton, Campbell and Co,, of Prince’s Park, Liverpool, visited this inn, 
and were pleased with the lamb-chops, but found the boats dear. June 28, 1850.” 

“ Thomas Buckram, sen., Ludley Park ; 

George Poins, sen., Ludley Bridge ; 

Came to Buttermere on the 26th, l2mo., 1850 ; that day had a glorious walk over 
the mountains from Keswick ; part of the way by Lake Derwent by boat. Stayed 
at Buttermere all night. Splendid eating ! ! ! 

“ 26, 12mo., 1850.” 

“ Rev. Joshua Russell and Son, 

Blackheath. 

The whiskey is particularly fine at this house, and we made an excellent dinner.” 

“ Oct. 7th, ’50. 

Philips Kelham. Manchester ; 

Joan F. Philipps ; 

Miss Margaretta Philipps. 

The Fish a most comfortable inn, A capital dinner. Good whiskey. The only 
GOOD glass we have MET WITH IN THE WHOLE LaKE DISTRICT.” 

“Mr, Edward King, Dalston, London, and 7, Fenchurch-street, London ; walked 
from Whitehaven to Ennerdale Lake, calling at the Boat House on the margin of 
the Lake, where, having invigorated the inward man, I took the mountain path 
between Floutern Tarn and Grosdale, passed Scale Force, and arrived in the high 
mountain which overlooks Crummoch and Buttermere : here, indeed, each moun- 
tain scene is magnificently rude. I entered the beautiful vale of Buttermere ; was 
fortunate enough to find the Fish Inn, where all were extremely civil ; and from 
the landlady I received politeness and very excellent accommodation. Had a 
glorious feed for 1«, 3rf. ! ! Chop, with a sharp sauce, fid. ; potatoes. Id. ; cheese. 
Id. ; bread. Id. ; beer, 5d. ; waitress (a charming, modest, and obliging young 
creature, who put me in mind of the story of the Maid of Buttermere, and learnt 
me the names of all the mountains). Id. : total. Is, 3d. Thursday, April 18. 
1850.”* 

* The reader is requested to remember that these are not given as matters of 
invention, but as literal extracts, with real names and dates, copied from the books 
kept by Mrs. Clark, the excellent hostess of the Fish Inn, Buttermere. 


MR. AND MRS. CUR8TY SANDBOYS., 


13 


CHAPTER II. 

** There’s been nae luck throughout the Ian’ 

Sin’ fwok mud leyke their betters sheyne ; 

The country’s puzzen’d roun’ wi’ preyde ; 

We’re c’aff and san’ to auld lang seyne.” 

North Country Ballad. 

Hard upon a mile from the village before described lived the hero, 
the heroine, and herolets of the present story, by names Mr. and 
Mrs. Sandboys, their son, Jobby, and their daughter, Elcy. Their 
home was one of the two squires’ houses before spoken of as lying 
at the extremes of the village. Mr. Christopher, or as after the 
old Cumberland fashion he was called, “ Cursty,’’ Sandboys, was native 
to the place, and since his college days at St. Bees, had never been 
further than Keswick or Cockermouth, the two great emporia and 
larders of Buttermere. He had not missed Keswick Cheese Fair for 
forty Martinmasses, and had been a regular attendant at Lanthwaite 
Green, every September, with his lean sheep for grazing. Nor did the 
Monday morning’s market at Cockermouth ever open without Mr. 
Christopher Sandboys, but on one day, and that was when the two 
bells of Lorton Church tried to tinkle a mai*riage peal in honour 
of his wedding with the heiress of Newlands. A “ statesman ” by 
birth, he possessed some hundred acres of land, with “ pasturing ” on 
the fell side for his sheep ; in which he took such pride that the walls 
of his “keeping-room,” or, as we should call it, sitting-room, were 
covered on one side with printed bills telling how his “ lamb-sucked 
ewes,” his “ Herdwickes,” and his “ shearling tups ” and“gimmers” 
had carried off the first and second best prizes at Wastdale and at 
Deanscale shows. Indeed it was his continual boast that he grew 
the coat he had on his back, and he delighted not only to clothe 
himself, but his son Jobby (much to the annoyance of the youth, 
who sighed for the gentler graces of kerseymere) in the undyed, or 
“ self-coloured,’’ wool of his sheep, known to all the country round 
as the “ Sandboys’ Grey ” — in reality a peculiar tint of speckled 
brown. His winter mornings were passed in making nets, and in 
the summer his winter-woven nets were used to despoil the waters of 
Buttermere of their trout and char. He knew little of the world 
but through the newspapers that reached him, half-priced, stained 
with tea, butter, and eggs, from a coffee-shop in London — and nothing 
of society but through that ideal distortion given us in novels, 
which makes the whole human family appear as a small colony of 
penniless angels, and wealthy demons. His long evenings were, how- 
ever, generally devoted to the perusal of his newspaper, and, living in a 
district to which crime was unknown, he became gi-adually impressed 
by reading the long catalogues of robberies and murdei-s that filled 
his London weekly and daily sheets, that all out of Cumberland was 
in a state of savage barbarism, and that the Metropolis was a ^'ery 


14 


1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF 


caldron of wickedness, of which the grosser scum was continually 
being taken off, through the medium of the police, to the colonies. 
In a word, the bugbear that haunted the innocent mind of poor 
Mr. Cursty Sandboys was the wickedness of all the world but Butter- 
mere. 

And yet to have looked at the man, one would never suppose 
that Sandboys could be nervous about anything. Taller than even 
the tallest of the villagei*s, among whom he had been bred and born, 
he looked a grand specimen of the human race in a country where it 
is by no means uncommon to see a labouring man with form and 
features as dignified, and manner’s as grave and self-possessed, as the 
highest bred nobleman in the land. His complexion still bore traces 
of the dark Celtic mountain tribe to which he belonged, but age had 
silvered his hair, which, with his white eyebrows and whiskers, 
contrasted strongly and almost beautifully with a small “ cwoal-black 
een.” So commanding, indeed, was his whole appearance, though 
in his suit of homespun grey, that, on first acquaintance, the 
exceeding simplicity of his nature came upon those who were strangers 
to the man and the place with a pleasant surprise. 

Suspicious as he was theoretically, and convinced of the utter evil 
of the ways of the world without Buttermere, still, practically, Cursty 
Sandboys was the easy dupe of many a tramp and Turnpike Sailor, 
that with long tales of intricate and accumulative distress, supported 
by apocryphal briefs and petitions, signed and attested by “ phantasm ” 
mayors and magistrates, sought out the fastnesses of Buttermere, to prey 
upon the innocence and hospitality of its people.* 

It was Mr. Sandboys’ special dehght, of an evening, to read the 
newspaper aloud to his family, and endeavour to impress his wife and 
children with the same sense of the rascality of the outer world as 
reigned within his own bosom. But his denunciations, as is too often 
the case, served chiefly to draw attention and to excite curiosity 

* To prove to the reader how systematic and professional is the vagrancy and 
trading beggary of this county, a gentleman, living in the neighbourhood of Butter- 
mere, and to whom we are indebted for many other favours, has obliged us with 
the subjoined registry and analysis of the vagabonds who sought relief at his house. 


from April 1, lr<48, to March 31, 1849 : — 

Males, (strangers) 80 

Males, (previously relieved) 73 

Females, (strangers) 10 

Females, (previously relieved) 41 

Total 204 


This is at the rate of two beggars a-week, for the colder six months of the year, 
and six a-week in the warm weather, visiting as remote, secluded, and humble a 
village as any in the kingdom. It is curious to note in the above the great number 
of females “ previously relieved” compared with the “strangers,” as s*howing that 
when women take to vagrancy they seldom abandon the trade. It were to be 
desired that gentlemen would perform similar services to the above in their 
several parts of the kingdom, so that, by a large collection of facts, the public 
might be at last convinced how pernicious to a community is promiscuous charity. 
Of all lessons there is none so dangerous as to teach people that they can live by 
other means than labour. 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


15 


touching subjects, which, without them, would probably have remained 
unheard of ; so that his family, unknown to each other, were secretly 
sighing for that propitious turn of destiny which should impel them 
where fashion and amusement never failed, as their father said, to lure 
their victim fi'om more serious pursuits. 

The mind of Mrs. Sandboys was almost as circumscribed as that of 
the good Cursty himself. If Sandboys loved his country, and its 
mountains, she was lost in her kitchen, her beds, and her buckbasket. 
His soul was hemmed in by “ the Hay-Stacks,” Red Pike, Melbrake, 
and Grassmoor, and hers, by the four walls of Hassness-house. She 
prided hei-self on her puddings, and did not hesitate to take her stand 
upon her pie-crust. She had often been heard to say, with extreme 
satisfaction, that her “buttered sops” were the admiration of the 
country round — and it was her boast that she could turn the large thin 
oat-cake at a toss ; while the only feud she had ever been known to have 
in all her life, was with Mi-s. Gill, of Low-Houses, Newlands, who 
declared that in her opinion the cakes were better made with two 
“ backbwords” than one ; and though several attempts had been made 
towards reconciliation, she had ever since withstood all advances towards 
a renewal of the ancient friendship that had cemented the two families. 
It was her glory that certain receipts had been in her family — the heir- 
looms of the eldest daughter — for many generations ; and, when roused 
on the subject, she had been heard to exclaim, that she would not part 
with her wild raspberry jelly but with her life ; and, come what may, 
she had made up her mind, to carry her “ sugared curds” down with her 
to her grave. 

The peculiar feature of Mrs. Sandboys’ mind was to magnify the 
mildest trifles into violent catastrophes. If a China shepherdess or 
porcelain Prince Albert were broken, she took it almost as much to 
heart as if a baby had been killed. Washing, to her, was almost a 
sacred ceremony, the day being invariably accompanied with fasts. 
Her beds were white as the opposite waters of “ Sour-Milk Gill ;” and 
the brightness of the brass hobs in the keeping-room at Hassness were 
brilliant tablets to record her domestic virtues. She was perpetually 
waging war with cobwebs, and, though naturally of a strong turn of 
mind, the only time she had been known to faint was, when the only 
flea ever seen in Hassness House made its appearance full in the front 
of Cui-sty Sandboys’ shirt, at his dinner, for the celebration of a Sheep- 
Shearing Prize, if her husband dreaded visiting London on account of 
its iniquities, she was deterred by the Cumberland legend of its bugs — 
for, to her rural mind, the people of the Great Metropolis seemed to be 
as much preyed upon by these vermin, as the natives of India by the 
white ants — and it was a conviction firmly implanted in her bosom, that 
if she once trusted herself in a London four-post, there would be nothing • 
left of her in the morning but her nightcap. 

The son and daughter of this hopeful pair were mere common-place 
creatures. The boy, Jobby, as Joseph is familiarly called in Cumber- 
land, had just shot up into hobbledy boyhood, and was long and thin, 
as if Nature had drawn him, like a telescope, out of his boots. Though 


16 


1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF 


almost a man in stature, he was still a boy in tastes, and full of life 
and activity — ever, to his mother’s horror, tearing his clothes in 
climbing the craigs for starlings and magpies, or ransacking the hedges 
for “ spinks” and “ skopps or else he terrified her by remaining 
out on the lake long past dusk, in a boat, or delighting to go up 
into the fells after the sheep, when overblown by the winter’s snow. 
His mother declared, after the ancient maternal fashion, that it was 
impossible to keep that boy clean, and how ever he wore out his clothes 
and shoes was more than she could tell. The pockets of the youth 
— of which she occasionally insisted on seeing the contents — will b«st 
show his character to the discerning reader ; these usually proved to 
comprise gentles, oat-cake, a leather sucker, percussion caps, a short pipe 
(for, truth to say, the youth was studying this great art of modern 
manhood), a few remaining bleaberries, a Jew’s-harp, a lump of 
cobbler’s wax, a small coil of shining gut, with fish-hooks at the end, 
a charge or two of shot, the Cumberland Songster, a many-bladed 
knife with corkscrew, horsepicker, and saw at the back, together 
with a small mass of paste, swarming with thin red worms, tied up in 
one of his sister’s best cambric pocket-handkerchiefs. 

Elcy, or Alice Sandboys, the sister of the last-named young gentle- 
man, was some two or three yeare his elder ; and, taking after 
her mother, had rather more of the Saxon complexion than her 
father or brother. At that age when the affections seek for some- 
thing to rest themselves upon, and located where society afforded no 
fitting object for her sympathies, her girlish bosom found relief in 
expending its tenderness on pet doves, and squirrels, and magpies, 
and such gentler creatures as were denizens of her fathei’’s woods. 
These, and all other animals she spoke of in diminutive endearment ; 
no matter what the size, all animals were little to her; for, in her 
own language, her domestic menagerie consisted of her dovey, her 
doggey, her dickey, her pussey, her scuggy, her piggey, and her cowey. 
In her extreme love for the animal creation, she would have taken 
the young trout from its play and liberty in the broad lake beside 
her, and kept it for ever circling round the crystal treadmill of a 
glass globe. But the coui*se of her true love ran anything but 
smooth. Jobby was continually slitting the tongue of her magpie 
with a silver sixpence, to increase its powei-s of language, or angling 
for her gold fish with an elaborate apparatus of hooks, or cariying 
off her favorite spaniel to have his ears and tail cut in the last new 
fashion, at the farrier’s, or setting her cat on a board down the lake, 
or performing a hundred other such freaks as thoughtless youth alone 
can think of, to the annoyance of susceptible maidens. Herself 
unaware of the pleasures of which she deprived the animals she caged 
and globed, and on which her sole anxiety was to heap every kindness, 
she was continually remonstrating with her brother (we regret to say 
with little effect) as to the wickedness of fishing, or, indeed, of putting 
anything to pain. 

Such was the character of the family located at Hassness House, 
— the only residence that animated the solitary banks of Butter mere — 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


17 


and such, doubtless, would the Sandboys have ever remained but for 
the advent of the year 1851. The news of the opening of the 
Great Exhibition had already penetrated the fastnesses of Butterraere, 
and the villagei-s, who perhaps, but for the notion that the whole 
world was about to treat itself to a trip to the metropolis, would have 
remained quiet in their mountain homes, had been, for months past, 
subscribing their pennies with the intention of having their share in the 
general holiday. Buttermere was one univei-sal scene of excitement 
from Woodhouse to Gatesgarth. Mrs. Nelson was making a double 
allowance of her excellent oat-cakes ; Mrs. Clark, of the Fish Inn, was 
packing up a jar of sugared butter, among other creature comforts for 
the occasion. John Cowman was brushing up his top shirt; Dan 
Fleming was greasing his calkered boots; John Lancaster was wonder- 
ing whether his hat were good enough for the great show ; all the old 
dames were busy ironing their deep frilled caps, and airing their hoods ; 
all the young lasses were stitching at all their dresses, while some of 
the more nervous villagers, who had never yet trusted themselves to 
a railway, w^ere secretly making their wills — preparatory to their grand 
starting for the metropolis. 

Amidst this general bustle and excitement there was, however, one 
house where the master was not absorbed in a calculation as to the 
probable length and expenses of the journey ; where the mistress was 
not busy preparing for the comfort of the outward and inward man 
of her lord and master ; where the daughter was not in deep consulta- 
tion as to the prevailing metropolitan fashions — and this house was 
Hassness. For Mr. Sandboys, with his long-cherished conviction of the 
wickedness of London, had expressed in unmeasured terms his positive 
determination that neither he himself, nor any that belonged to him, 
should ever be exposed to the moral pollution of the metropolis. This 
was a sentiment in which Mrs. Sandboys heartily concurred, though on 
veiy different grounds — the one objecting to the moral, the other to the 
physical, contamination of the crowded city. Mr. Sandboys had been 
thrice solicited to join the Buttermere Travelling Club, and thrice he 
had held out against the most pereuasive appeals. But Squire 
Jopson, who acted as Treasurer to the Travelling Association for the 
Great Exhibition of 1851, not liking that his old friend Sandboys 
should be the only one in all Buttermere who absented himself from 
the general visit to the metropolis, waited upon him at Hassness 
to offer him the last chance of availing himself of the advantages of 
that valuable institution as a means of conveying himself and family, 
at the smallest possible expense, to the great metropolis, and of 
allowing him and them a week’s stay, as well as the privilege of 
participating in all the amusements and gaieties of the capital at its 
gayest possible time. 

It was a severe trial for Sandboys to withstand the united batteries 
of Jopson’s enthusiastic advocacy, his daughter’s entreaties, his son’s 
assurances of steadiness. But Sandboys, though naturally possessed of 
a heart of butter, dehghted to assure himself that he carried about a 
flint in his bosom ; so he told Jopson, with a shake of his head, that 

2 


18 


1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OP 


lie might as well try to move Helvellyn or shake Skidd aw ; and that, 
while he blushed for the weakness of his family, he thanked Heaven 
that he, at least, was adamant. 

Jopson showed him by the list he brought with him that the whole 
of the villagers wei’e going, and that Hassness would be left 
neighbourless for a circuit of seven miles at least ; whereupon 
Sandboys observed, with a chuckle, that the place could not be much 
more quiet than it was, and that with those fine fellows, Robinson and 
Davy Top, and Dod and Honister around him, he should never want 
company. 

Jopson talked sagely of youths seeing the world and expanding 
their minds by travel ; whereat the eyes of the younger Sandboys 
glistened ; but the father rejoined, that travel was of use only for 
the natural beauties of the scenery it revealed, and the virtues of 
the people with whom it brought the traveller into association; 
“ and where,” he asked, with evident pride of county, “ could more 
natural beauty or greater native virtue be found, than amongst 
the mountains and the pastoral race of Buttermere ?” Seizing the 
latest Times that had reached him the evening before, he pointed 
triumphantly to some paragraph, headed “ Ingenious Fraud on a 
Yokel!” wherein a country gentleman had been cleverly duped of 
some hundreds of pounds paid to him that morning at Smiths 
field ; and he asked with sarcasm, whether those were the scenes and 
those the people that Jopson thought he could improve his son Jobby 
by introducing him to ? 

In vain Jopson pulled from his pocket a counter newspaper, 
and showed him the 23lan of some monster Lodging House which 
was to afford accommodation for one thousand persons from the 
country, at one and the same time, “ for one-aad-three per night ?” — 
how, for this small sum, each of the thousand was to be pro- 
vided “with bedstead, good wool mattrass, sheets, blankets, and 
coverlet ; with soap, towels, and every accommodation for ablution 
— how the two thousand boots of the thousand lodgers were to be 
cleaned at one penny per pair, and their one thousand chins to be 
shaven by relays of barbers continually in attendance — how a sur- 
geon was “ to attend at nine o’clock every morning,” to examine the 
lodgers, and “instantly remove all cases of infectious disease” — how 
there was to be “ a smoking-room, detached from the main building, 
where a band of music was to play every evening, gTatis” — how 
omnibuses to all the theatres and amusements and sights were to 
carry the thousand sight-seers at one penny per head — how “ cold roast 
and boiled beef and mutton, and ditto ditto sausages and bacon, 
and pickles, salads, and fruit pies (when to be procured), were to be 
furnished, at fixed prices,” to the thousand country gentlemen with 
the thousand country appetites — how “all the dormitories were to be 
well lighted with gas to secure the complete privacy of the occupants” 
— how “they were to be watched over by efficient wardens and 
police constables” — ^how “ an office was to be opened for the security 
of luggage” — and how “ the proprietor pledged himself that every care 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


should be taken to ensure the comfort, convenience, and strict disci- 
pline of so large a body.” 

Sandboys, who had sat perfectly quiet while Jobson was detailing 
the several advantages of this Brobdignagian boarding-house, bui'st 
out at the completion of the narrative with a demand to be informed 
whether it was probable that he, who had passed his whole life in a 
village consisting of fifteen houses and but seven families, would, in his 
fifty-fifth year, consent to take up his abode with a thousand people 
under one roof, with a gas-light to secure the privacy of his bed-room, 
policemen to watch him all night, and a surgeon to examine him in 
the morning ! 

Having thus delivered himself, he turned round, with satisfaction, 
to appeal to his wife and children, when he found them to his horror, 
with the newspaper in their hands, busily admiring the picture of the 
very building that he had so forcibly denounced. 

Early the next morning, Mrs. Sandboys, with Jobby and Elcy, went 
down to the Fish Inn, to see the dozen carts and cars leave, with the 
united villagers of Buttermere, for the “ Travellers’ Train ” at Cocker- 
mouth. There was the stalwart Daniel Fleming, of the White Howe, 
mounted on his horse, with his wife, her baby in her arms, and the 
children, with the farm-maid,, in the cart, — his two men trudging by 
its side. There was John Clark, of Wilkinsyke, the farmer and states- 
man, with his black-haired sons, Isaac and Johnny, while Richard rode 
the piebald pony ; and Joseph and his wife, with little Grace, and their 
rosy-cheeked maid, Susannah, from the Fish Inn, sat in the car, kept at 
other times for the accommodation of their visitors. After them 
came Isaac Cowman, of the Croft, the red-face farmer-constable, with 
his fine tall, flaxen, Saxon family about him ; and, following in his 
wake, his Roman-nosed nephew John, the host of “The Victoria,” 
with his brisk, bustling wife on his arm. Then came handsome old 
John Lancaster, seventy years of age, and as straight as the mountain 
larch, with his wife and his sons, Andrew and Robert, and their 
wives. And following these, John Branthwaite, of Bowtherbeck, the 
parish-clerk, with his wife and wife’s mother; and Edward Nelson, 
the sheep-breeder, of Gatesgarth, dressed in his well-known suit of 
grey, with his buxom gude-wife, and her three boys and her two girls 
by her side ; while the fresh-coloured bonny lassie, her maid, Betty 
Gatesgarth, of Gatesgarth, in her bright green dress and pink ribbons, 
strutted along in their wake. Then came the Riggs : James Rigg, the 
miner, of Scots Tuft, who had come over fr’om his work at Cleator for 
the special holiday ; and there were his wife and young boys, and J ane 
Rigg, the widow, and her daughter Mary Ann, the grey-eyed beauty of 
Buttermere, in her jaunty jacket-waisted dress ; with her swarthy 
black-whiskered Celtic brother, and his pleasant-faced Saxon wife 
carrying their chubby-cheeked child ; and behind them came Ann Rigg, 
the slater’s widow, from Craig House, with her boys and little giii-, 
and, leaning on their shouldei-s, the eighty-years-old, white-haii-ed, 
Braithwaite Rigg and his venerable dame ; and close upon them was 
seen old Rowley Lightfoot, his wife, and son John. Squire Jobson’s 


I 


20 1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OP 

man walked beside the car from the Fish Inn, talking to the tidy, 
clean old housekeeper of Woodhouse ; while the Squire himself rode 
in the rear, proud and happy as he marshalled the merry little band 
along ; — for, truth to say, it would have been difficult to find in any 
other part of England so much manliness and so much rustic beauty 
centred in so small a spot. 

As they moved gently along the road, John Cowman, the host of 
the Victoria, struck up the following , well-known song, which was 
welcomed with a shout from the whole “ lating — 

“ I’s Borrowdale Jwohnny, just come up to Lunnon, 

Nay, gurn nit at me, for fear I laugh at you; 

I’ve seen kneaves donn’d i’ silks, and gud men gang in tatters ; 

The truth we sud tell, and gi’e auld Nick his due.” 

Then the gust rushed down the valley, and the voices of the happy 
holiday throng were swept, for a moment, away ; as it lulled again, the 
ear, familiar to the song, could catch the laugh and cheei*s that accom- 
panied the next verse : — 

“ ‘ Keep frae t* lasses, and ne’er luik ahint thee.’ 

‘ We’re deep as the best o’ them, fadder,’ says I. 

They packed up ae sark, Sunday weascwoat, twee neckcloths, 

Wot bannock, cauld dumplin’, and top stannin’ pye.” 

Again the voices were lost in the turning of the road, and presently, 
as they shout out once more, they might be heard singing in full 
chorus — 

“ Ca’ and see cousin Jacep, he’s got a’ the money ; 

He’ll git thee some guver’ment place to be seer.” 

At last, all was still — but scarcely more still than when the whole 
of the cottages were filled with their little families, for the village, 
though now utterly deserted, would have seemed to the stranger to 
have been as thickly populated and busy as ever. 


CHAPTER III. 

" Heaste, Jenny ! put the bairns to bed. 

And mind they say their prayers. 

Sweet innocents ! their heads yence down. 

They sleep away their cares ! 

But gi’ them furst a butter-shag ; 

When young, they munnet want, — 

Nor ever sal a bairn o’ mine 
While I’ve a bite to grant.” 

The Happy Family. 

The younger Sandboys took the departure of the villagers more to 
heart than did their mother ; though, true to her woman’s nature, had 
the trip been anywhere but to London, she would have felt hurt at 
not making one of the pleasure-party. On reaching home, she and 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


21 


Mr. Sandboys congratulated one another that they were not on their 
way to sufter the miseries of a week’s residence amidst either the dirt 
or the wickedness of the metropolis ; but Elcy and Jobby began, for 
the first time, to feel that the retirement, which they heard so much 
vaunted every day, and which so many persons came from all parts of 
the country to look at and admire, cut them off from a considerable 
share of the pleasures which all the world else seemed so ready 
to enjoy, and which they began shrewdly to suspect were not quite so 
tenible as their father was in the habit of making out. 

Thus matters continued at Hassness till the next Tuesday evening, 
when Mrs. Sandboys remarked that it was “ very strange ” that 
“ Matthew Harker, t’ grocer, had not been to village ” with his pony and 
cart that day ; and “ what she e'ud do for t’ tea, and sugar, and soft 
bread, she didn’t know.” 

Now, seeing that the nearest grocer was ten miles distant, and that 
there was no borrowing this necessaiy article from any of their neigh- 
bours, as the whole village was then safely housed in London, such a 
failure in the visit of the peripatetic tea-man, upon whom the inhabit- 
ants of Biittermere and Crummock Water one and all depended for 
their souchong, and lump, and moist, and wheaten bread, was 
a matter of more serious importance than a townsman might 
imagine. 

It was therefore aiTanged that Postlethwaite their man should 
take Paddy t’ pony over to Keswick the next day, to get the week’s 
supply of grocery, and learn what had happened to Harker, in whom 
the Sandboys took a greater interest from the fact of their having 
subscribed, with others of the gentry, when Harker lost his hand by 
blasting cobbles, to start him in the gi’ocery business, and provide him 
with a hoise and cart to carry his goods round the country. 

Postlethwaite — a long, grave, saturnine-looking man, who was “a 
little ” hard of hearing, was, after much shouting in the kitchen, made 
to comprehend the nature of his errand. But he had quitted 
Hassness only a short hour, when he returned with the sad intelli- 
gence — which he had picked up from Ellick Crackanthorpe, who was 
left in charge of Keskadale, while the family had gone to town, — that 
Harker, finding all the folk about Keswick had departed for the Great 
Exhibition, and hearing that Buttermere had done the same, had put 
his wife and his nine children inside his own van, and was at that time 
crawhng up by easy stages to London. 

Moreover, Postlethwaite brought in the dreary tidings that, in 
coming down from the top of the Hause, just by Bear’s fall, Paddy had 
cast a shoe, and that it was as much as he could do to get him down 
the Moss side. This calamity was a matter of as much delight to the 
youngsters as it was of annoyance to the elder Sandboys ; for seeing 
that Bob Beck, the nearest blacksmith, lived six miles distant, and 
that it was impossible to send either to Cockermouth or Keswick for 
the necessaries of life, until the pony was armed against the rockiness 
of the road, it became a matter of considerable difficulty to settle what 
could be done. 


22 


1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OP 


After much serious deliberation, it was finally arranged that Postle- 
thwaite should lead the pony on to the “ smiddy,” at Loweswater, 
to be shod, and then ride him over to Dodgson’s, the grocer’s, at 
Cockermouth. 

Postlethwaite, already tired, and, it must be confessed, not a little 
vexed at the refusal of Mr. Sandboys to permit him to accompany 
his fellow-villagers on this London trip — the greatest event of all 
their lives — started very sulky, and came back, long after dusk, with 
the pony lamed by a stone in his foot, and himself savage with hunger, 
and almost rebelhous vrith Migue ; for, on getting to the “ smiddy,” he 
found that Beck the blacksmith had ruddled on his door the inscrip- 
tion — 

“ Geane to Lunnon for to see t’ Girt ’Shibition !” 

and worse than all to Postlethwaite, he discovered, moreover, on 
seeking his usual ale at Kirkstile, that Harry Peai-son, the landlord, 
had accompanied the Buttermere travellers’ train up to town ; and 
that John Wilkinson, the other landlord, had followed him the day 
after ; so that there was neither bite nor sup to be had in the place, and 
no entertainment either for man or beast. 

In pity to Paddy, if not in remembrance of the farmer’s good cheer, 
Postlethwaite, on his way back, turned down to Joe W atson’s, at 
Lanthwaite, and there found it impossible to make anybody hear him, 
for the farmer and his six noble-looking sons — ^known for miles round 
as the flower of the country — had also joined the sight-seers on their 
way to the train at Cockennouth. 

This was sad news to the little household. It was the first incident 
that gave Mrs. Sandboys an insight into the possible difficulties that their 
remaining behind, alone, at Ilassness, might entail upon the family. 
She and Mr. Sandboys had hitherto only thought of the inconveniences 
attending a visit to London, and little dreamt that their absence from 
it, at such a time, might force them to undergo even greater troubles. 
She could perhaps have cheerfully tolerated the abdication of the 
Cockermouth milliner — she might have heard, without a sigh, that Mr. 
Bailey had put up the shuttere of his circulating library, and stopped 
the supply of “ Henrietta Temples,” “ Emilia Wyndhams,” and “ The 
Two Old Men she might not even have complained had Thompson 
Martin, the draper, cut short her ribbons and laces, by shutting up his 
shop altogether — but to have taken away her tea and sugar, was more 
than a lady in the vale of yeare, and the valley of Buttermere, could be 
expected to endure, without some outrage to philosophy ! 

The partiality of the sex in general for their morning and evening 
cup of souchong and “ best refined,” is now ranked by physiologists 
among those inscrutable instincts of sentient nature, which are beyond 
the reach of scientific explanation. What oil is to the Esquimaux, 
what the juice of the cocoa-nut is to the monkey, what water is to the 
fish, what dew is to the flower, and what milk is to the cat — so is tea to 
woman ! No person yet, in our own country, has propounded any suffi- 
cient theory to account for the English washerwomen’s all-absorbing 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


23 


love of the Chinese infusion — nor for the fact of every maid-servant, 
when stipulating the terms of her engagement, always making it an 
express condition of the hiring, that she should be provided with “ tea 
and sugar,” and of every mistress continually declaring that she “ would 
rather at any time go without her dinner than her tea.” 

What sage has yet taught us that womankind is as gi’egarious over 
tea as mankind over wine ? Sheridan has called the Bottle the sun 
of the table ; but surely the Teapot, with its attendant cups, may be 
considered as a heavenly system, towards which all the more beautiful 
bodies concentre, where the piano may be said to represent the music 
of the spheres, and in which the gentlemen, heated with wine, and 
darting in eccentric coui’se from the dining-room, may be regarded as 
fieiy comets. We would ask any lady whether Paradise could have 
been a garden of bliss without the tea-plant ; and whether the ever-to- 
be-regretted error of our first mother was not the more unpardonable, 
fi’om the fact of her having prefen-ed to pilfer an apple rather than pluck 
the “fullest flavoured Pekoe.” And may not psychology here trace 
some faint transcendental reason for the descendants of Adam still loving 
to linger over their apples after dinner, shunning the tea-table and 
those connected with it. Yet, perhaps, even the eating of apples has 
not been more dangerous to the human family than the sipping of tea. 
If sin came in with pippins, surely scandal was brought into the world 
with Bohea ! Adam fell a victim to his wife’s longing for a Ribston, 
and how many Eves have since fallen martyre to the sex’s love of the 
slanderous Souchong. 

Mrs. Sandboys was not prepared for so great a sacrifice as her tea, 
and when she first heard from Postlethwaite the certainty of Harker’s 
departure, and saw, by the result of this second journey, that there 
was no hope of obtaining a supply from Cockermouth, there was a 
moment when she allowed her bosom to whisper to her, that even 
the terror of a bed in London would be preferable to a tea-less life 
at Hassness. 

Mr. Sandboys, however, no sooner saw that there was no tea or 
sugar to be had than he determined to sweeten his cup with philo- 
sophy ; so, bursting out with a snatch of the “ Cumberland Lang 
Seyne,” he exclaimed, as cheerily as he could under the circum- 
stances — 

“ Deuce tek the fuil-invented tea ; 

For tweyce a day we that mun’ hev ; 

and immediately after this, decided upon the whole family’s reverting 
to the habits of their ancestors, and drinking “yale” for breakfast. 
This was by no means pleasant, but as it was clear she could do 
nothing else. Mi’s. Sandboys, like a sensible woman, turned her 
attention to the contents of the ale-cask, and then discovered that 
snme evil-disposed pei-son, whom she strongly suspected to be Master 
Jobby — ^for that young gentleman began to display an increasing 
enjoyment in each succeeding catastrophe — had left the tap running, 
and that the cellar floor was covered three inches deep with the liquid 


24 


1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF 


intended to take off the dryness and somewhat sawdusty character of 
the oat-cake, which, in the absence of any wh eaten bread, now formed 
the staple of their morning meal. 

Now it so happened, that it wanted a fortnight of the retui-n of 
Jennings’ man, the brewer, whose periodical circumgyrations with the 
beer, round about Buttermere, gave, like the sun, life and heat to the 
system of its inhabitants. In this dire emergency, Postlethwaite, whose 
deafness was found to increase exactly in proportion to the inconvenience 
of the journeys required of him, was had out, and shaken well, and 
bawled at, preparatory to a walk over toLorton Vale, where the brewery 
was situated — only six miles distant. 

But his trip on this occasion was about as successful as the last, for 
on reaching the spot, he found that the brewer, like the grocer, the 
farrier, and the publicans, had disappeared for London on the same 
pleasurable mission. 

The family at Hassness was thus left without tea, beer, or bread, 
and, consequently, reduced to the pure mountain stream for their 
beverage, and oaten cakes and bacon for their principal diet. Their 
stock of fresh meat was usually procured from Frank Hutchison, the 
butcher at Cockermouth, but to go or send thither, under their present 
circumstances, appeared to be impossible. So that Mi’s. Sandboys 
began to have serious alarms about two or three pimples that made 
their appearance on Cursty’s face, lest a continued course of salt meat 
and oat-cake should end in the whole family being afflicted with the 
scurvy. She would immediately have insisted on putting them, one 
and all, under a severe course of treacle and brimstone, with a dash 
of cream of tartar in it to “ sweeten their blood only, luckily, there 
was iieither treacle nor brimstone, nor cream of tartar, to be had for 
twenty miles, nor anybody to go for it, and then, probably, nobody at 
Mr. Bowerbank’s to serve it. 

Sandboys, seeing that he had no longer any hope in Postlethwaite, 
was now awakened to the necessity of making a personal exertion. 
His wife, overpowered by this addition of the loss of dinner to the loss 
of tea, did not hesitate to suggest to him, that perhaps it might 
be as well, if they consented to do like the rest of the world, and 
betake themselves for a few days to London. For her own part, she 
was ready to make any sacrifice, even to face the London dirt. But 
Sandboys would listen to no compromise, declared that greatness showed 
itself alone in overcoming circumstances — and talked grandly of his 
forefathers, who had held out so long in these self-same mountain 
fastnesses. Mrs. Sandboys had no objection to make to the heroism, 
but she said that really Elcy’s complexion required fresh meat; and 
that although she herself was prepared to give up a great deal, yet 
her Sunday’s dinner was more than she was inclined to part with, 
and as for sacrifices, she had already sacrificed enough in the loss of 
her tea. Mr. Sandboys upon this bethought him of John Banks, the 
pig-butcher at Lorton, and having a young porker just ready for the 
knife, fancied he could not do better than despatch Postlethwaite with 
the animal to Lorton to be slaughtered. This, however, was sooner 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


25 


decided upon than effected ; for Postlethwaite, on being summoned, 
made his appearance in shppere, and declared he had worn out, in 
his several foraging excursions about the country, the only pair of 
shoes he had left. Whereupon his master, though it was with some 
difficulty he admitted the excuse, — and this not until Postlethwaite, 
with a piteous gi’avity, had brought out a pair of calkered boots in the 
very worst possible condition, — began to foresee that there was even 
more necessity for Postlethwaite to be shod than Paddy, for that 
unless hb could be got over to Cockermouth, they might be fairly 
starved out. Accordingly, he gave his son Jobby instructions to make 
the best of his way to the two shoemakers, who resided within five 
miles of Hassness, for he made sure that one of the cobblers at least 
could be prevailed upon to put Postlethwaite in immediate travelling 
order. 

It was long after nightfall, and Mrs. Sandboys had grown very uneasy 
as to the fate of her dear boy, when Postlethwaite was heard condohng 
over the miserable plight of Master Jobby. His mother rushed out to 
see what had happened, and found the bedraggled youth standing with 
one shoe in the hall, the other having been left behind in a bog, which 
he had met with in his attempt to make a short cut home on the other 
side of the lake by Melbrake. 

Nor was the news he brought of a more cheerful nature. John 
Jackson the shoemaker was nowhere to be found. He had not been 
heard of since the departure of the train ; and John Goss, the other 
shoemaker, had turned post-boy again, and refus^ed to do any cobbling 
whatsoever. Goss had told him he got a job to take some gentlefolks 
in a car over to Garlisle, to meet the train for London, and he was just 
about to start ; and if Jobby liked, he would give him a hft thus far on 
t’ road to Girt ’Shibition. 

This was a sad damper for Sandboys, for with John Jackson the 
shoemaker seemed to vanish his last hope. Postlethwaite had worn out 
his boots, Jobby had lost his shoes, and John Jackson and John Goss, 
the only men, within ten miles, who could refit them, were both too fully 
taken up with the Great Exhibition to trouble them heads about the 
destitution of Hassness. 

Postlethwaite almost smiled when he heard the result of Jobby ’s 
twelve-mile walk, and drily remarked to the servant-maid, who already 
showed strong symptoms of discontent — haring herself a sweetheart 
exposed, without her care, to the temptations and wickedness of London 
— that the whole family would be soon barefoot, and going about the 
countryside trying to get one another shod. 

Sandboys consulted with his wife as to what was to be done, but 
she administered but little consolation ; for the loss of her tea, and 
the prospect of no Sunday’s dinner, had ruffled her usual equanimity. 
The sight of her darling boy, too, barefoot and footsore, aroused every 
passion of her mother’s heart. Jobby had no other shoes to his feet 
she told her husband, for the rate at which that boy wore his things 
out was quite terrible to a mother’s feelings ; but Mr. Sandboys had 
no right to send the lad to such a distance, after such weather as they 


26 


1851 ; OB, THE ADVENTURES OF 


had just had. He might have known that Jobby was always taking 
short cuts, and always getting up to his knees in some mess or other ; 
and he must naturally have expected that Jobby would have left both 
his shoes behind him instead of one — and those the only shoes he 
had. She should not wonder if Mr. Sandboys had done it for the 
purpose. Who was to go the errands now, she should like to know ? 
Mr. Sandboys, perhaps, liked living there, in that out-of-the-way hole, 
like a giant or a hermit. Did he expect that she or Elcy were going 
to drive that pig to Lorton ? — And thus she continued, going over and 
over again every one of the troubles that their absence from London 
had brought upon them, until Sandboys was womed into excitement, 
and plumply demanded of her whether she actually wished to go hemelf 
to the exhibition? Mrs. Sandboys was at no loss for a reply, and 
retorted, that what she wanted was her usual meals, and shoes for her 
children ; and if she could not get them there, why, she did not care if 
she had to go to Hyde Park for them. 

Sandboys was little prepared for this confession of hostilities on 
the part of his beloved Aggy. He had never known her address him 
in such a tone since the day she swore at Lorton to honor and obey 
him. He jumped from his chair and began to pace the room — now 
wondering what had come to his family and servants, now lamenting 
the want of tea, now sympathizing with the absence of ale, now biting 
his thumb as he contemplated the approximating dilemma of a 
dinnerless Sunday, and now inwardly cursing the Great Exhibition, 
which had not only taken all his neighboui’s from him, and deprived 
him of almost all the necessaries of life, but seemed destined to estrange 
his wife and children ! 

For a moment the idea passed across his mind, that perhaps it 
might be better to give way ; but he cast the thought from him 
immediately, and as he trod the room with redoubled quickness and 
firmness of step, he buttoned his grey coat energetically across his 
breast, swelling with a resolution to make a desperate effort. He 
would drive the pig himself over to John Banks, the pig-butcher’s at 
Lorton! But, as in the case of Postlethwaite, Mr. Cursty Sandboys 
soon found that resolving to drive a pig was a far difterent thing 
from doing it. Even in a level country the pig-driving art is none 
of the most facile acquirements, — but where the way to be traversed 
consists at every other yard of either a fell, a craig, a gill, a morass, 
a comb, a pike, a knot, a rigg, a skar, a beck, a howe, a force, a syke, or 
a tarn, or some other variety of those comfortable quarters into which a 
pig, with his peculiar perversity, would take especial delight in 
introducing his compagnon de voyage — the accomplishment of pig- 
driving in Cumberland partakes of the character of what aesthetic critics 
love to term “ High Art.” 

Nor did Mr. Sandboys’ pig — in spite of the benevolence and “ sops” 
administered during his education by the gentle Elcy, who shed team 
at his departure — at all detract from the glories of his race. Contrary 
to the earnest advice of Postlethwaite, founded on the experience of 
ages, who exhorted his master to keep the string loose in his hand — 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


27 


Sandboys, who had a theory of his own about pig-driving, and who 
was afraid if the animal once got away from him in the hills, he 
would carry with him the family’s only chance of fresh meat for 
weeks to come — made up his mind to keep a safe hold of him, and so, 
twisted the string which he had attached to the porker’s leg two or 
three turns round his own wrist. 

Scarcely had Elcy petitioned her brother for the gentle treatment 
of her pet “ piggy,” than, crack ! Jobby, who held the whip at the gate, 
while his father adjusted the reins, sent a flanker on the animal’s hind- 
quarters. Away went “ piggy,” and we regret to say, away went the 
innocent Sandboys, not after, but with him — and precisely in the oppo- 
site direction to what he had intended. “ Cwoley,” the dog, who had 
been dancing round the pig at the gate, no sooner saw the animal start 
off at score, than entering into the spirit of the scene, he gave full chase, 
yelping, and jumping, and snapping at him, so that the terrified porker 
fetched sharp round upon Sandboys, and bolted straight up the moun- 
tain side. 

Now, to the stranger it should be made known, that climbing the 
fells of Cumberland is no slight task — even when the traveller is 
allowed to pick his steps ; but, with a pig to lead, no choice but to 
follow, and a dog behind to urge the porker on, the operation becomes 
one of considerable hardship, if not peril. Moreover, the mountain, 
over which Mr. Sandboys’ pig had chosen to make his course, was 
called “ the Moss,” or “ Morass,” from its peculiar swampy character. 
Up went the pig, through bracken, and furze, and holly-bush, and up 
by the stunted oaks, and short-cut stumps, and straight on, up through 
the larches, over the rugged clump above Hassness ; and up went Mr. 
Sandboys, over and through every one of the same obstacles, making 
a fresh rent in his trowsers at every “ Avhin-bush ” — scratched, torn, 
panting, slipping, and— if we must confess it — swearing ; now tum- 
bling, now up again, but still holding on to the pig, or the pig holding 
on to him, for grim death. 

But if it were difficult to ascend a Cumberland fell with a pig in 
front, how much more trying the descent ! No sooner had “ Cwoley” 
turned the pig at the top, than Sandboys, as he looked down 
the precipitous mountain up which his porker had dragged him, “ saw 
his work before him.” It required but a slight momentum to start 
him ; and then, aw^ay they all three went together — in racing technology 
“you might have covered them with a sheet” — the dog barking, and 
the pig squeaking, and dragging Mr. Sandboys down the hill, at a 
rate that promised to bring him to the bottom with more celerity than 
safety. Unfortunately, too, the pig took his course towards the beck 
formed by the torrent at the “ Goat’s Gills and no sooner did it reach 
the ravine, than worried by the dog, it precipitated itself and Mr. Sand- 
boys right down into the foaming, but luckily not very deep, waters. 

But, if it were not deep, the bottom of the beck was at least stony ; 
and there, on his back, without breath to cry out, lay the wretched 
Sandboys, a victim to his theory, his coat skirtless, his pantaloons 
tom to shreds, and the waters curling white about him, with the 


28 


1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF 


driving string in his hand, cut by the sharp craigs in his fall — while 
the legs, the loin, the griskin, and the chine — that were to have 
consoled the family for weeks, were running off upon the pettitoes 
which he had privately set aside for his own supper on some quiet 
evening. 

Elcy, who, throughout the whole chase, had been bewailing the poor 
“piggy’s” troubles, and exclaiming to her father not to hurt it, 
screamed with terror as, from the gate, she saw the plunge and splash ; 
while the wicked Jobby, who had been rendered powerless by laughter, 
and the want of shoes, and Postlethwaite, who also had been inwardly 
enjoying the scene, now rushed forward to the rescue, in company 
with t& whole household, and dragged out from the beck the 
bruised, tattered, bedraggled, bespattered, bedi’enched, and wretched 
Sandboys — the more annoyed, because the first inquiry addressed to 
him by Mi-s. Sandboys, in a voice of mingled terror and tenderness, was, 
“ Whatever has become of the pig ?” 

That was a mystery which took some hour or two to solve ; for it 
was not until Elcy and Jobby, in Pos,tlethwaite’s old shoes, had explored 
both Robinson and the Moss, that they caught sight of “ Cwoley ” on 
the slope beside the foot of Buttermere Lake, dancing, in wild delight, 
round the shaft of a deserted mine, known as “Muddock,” where, as 
became evident from the string twisted round the bushes, the pig, 
like Gurtius, had plunged suicidally into the gulf, and was then lying, 
unbaked, unroasted, and unboiled, in twelve foot water ! 

Sandboys, when the news was brought him, was, both metaphori- 
cally and literally, in hot water. He sat with ' his two feet in a 
steaming pail, and wrapped in a blanket, with a basin of smoking oat- 
meal gruel in his hand, Mrs. Sandboys by his side, airing a clean shirt 
at the fire, and vowing all the while, that she should not wonder if 
his obstinacy in stopping down there, starving all the family, and 
denying them even the necessaries of life, to gratify his own pervereity, 
were not the death of hereelf and the dear childi’en. If he caught his 
death, he would only have himself to blame ; for there was not a 
Dover’s Powder within twenty miles to be had for love or money; 
and as for tallowing his nose, it was more than she could afford to do, 
for the candles were running so short, and there was not a tallow- 
chandler remaining in the neighbourhood, so that in a few days she 
knew that, all through his fine management, they would be left not only 
tealess, beerless, meatless, and, she would add, her dear boy shoeless, 
but also in positive darkness. 

This second outbreak on the part of the generally placid and anti- 
metropolitan Mrs. Sandboys was superinduced by a discovery she had 
made that morning, when about to give out the soap for the next day’s 
monthly wash. She then remembered that the stock which she had 
ordered of Harker had not come to hand ; and there being no oppor- 
tunity of getting to Dodgson or to Herd — supposing either of them 
to be at Cockermouth — or of reaching any other oilman or tallow- 
chandler — even if such a character existed in the neighbourhood within 
a circuit of fifty miles — she began to see that by remaining at Hass- 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTT SANDBOYS. 


29 


ness, she and her children would positively he reduced to a more 
horrible state of dirtiness than the metropolis could possibly emulate, 
even taking for granted the truth of all the reports concerning the 
Thames water, which Mr. Sandboys dehghted in reading to her from 
the newspapers. 

Scarcely had Mrs. Sandboys given vent to this “ bit of her mind,” 
than the forms of long Postlethwaite and little Ann Lightfoot appeared 
at the door, to give the miserable Cui-sty “warning.” Ann Light- 
foot begged to state, that the coals were beginning to run so short, 
and the large fire Mr. Sandboys had just made up to dry his clothes 
and shoes had so reduced their small stock, that they would be left 
without a spark in the range below stairs ; and they had made 
up their minds to leave the very next day, for the kitchen was so 
damp, that, without a fire, they knew it would be the death of them. 

Sandboys remonstrated, saying, that some of the slate-carts from the 
quarries at Honister would be sure to be passing the house on their 
way to Cockermouth, and they might order them to bring him a 
return cargo of coals from Great Southern. But Postlethwaite, with 
a pertinacity the reverse of pleasant, replied, that he had thought of 
all this before, if his master had not ; and had watched two days con- 
secutively, without seeing a single cart ; Master Jobby, besides, had 
told him ho knew there was no one working at the quarries, for he 
had not heard the sound of the blasting during the last fortnight. 

'' Without beer, ^vithout meat, without tea, without sugar, without coals, 
and, what was more, without tobacco — as he had been for the last ten 
days — Postlethwaite observed, he thought it was hard his master 
should expect him and Ann to stop, when the lassie was almost 
starved ; it would be better far that they should leave the family to 
share amongst them the few provisions remaining. 

Here Ann Lightfoot began to wipe the tears from her eyes with the 
comer of her apron — an action that produced a series of sympathe- 
tical sobs from Mre. Sandboys, who hysterically gurgled out, that it 
was impossible to tell what would become of them all in that dreadful 
lonely, damp place, — without medicine — or doctor — or dinner — or 
even the means of warming, or lighting, or cleaning themselves ! 

It was at this juncture that Elcy entered the room, her blue eyes 
bathed in a flood of tears, to pour into her father’s bosom the fate of 
her beloved “ piggy !” Overpowered with this battery of hysterics, 
and the accumulated distresses and disaffection of his united house- 
hold, Sandboys would have rushed fr’om the apartment — and, indeed, 
did make an effort to do so ; but remembering the paucity of his attire, 
he plumped rapidly down again, wrapping his blanket round him 
wth the dignity of an Indian chief. 

It was impossible, however, after a fortnight’s low Imng, to main- 
tain for a length of time anything like grandeur of soul, so 
Sandboys soon got to participate in that depression of spirits which, 
owing to the spare diet, had begun to pervade the whole household 
at Hassness. In a few minutes the would-be stoical Cursty was 
melted, like the rest of them, into teai*s. Now blubbering, now 


30 


1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF 


snivelling, now sobbing, be proceeded to appeal to the generosity of 
Postlethwaite and the feelings of Ann Lightfoot, he spoke of their 
long services, and how the affection between the master and the 
servant was the pride of their native county, and imploringly 
besought them not to leave him in his present position, but to wait 
only a few days longer, when their friends and neighbours could not 
fail of returning ; for he was convinced London wickedness must pall, 
after a brief experience, upon the pure and simple minds of the people 
of Buttermere ; and he wound up by pointing to his children, and 
begged of them not to force him to di’ag those dear innocents into the 
foul contamination of a London life. 

This appeal had not the desired effect. Postlethwaite, although 
he had been with Sandboys since a boy, and looked upon Jobby, 
from long association, almost as a child of his own, — and although in 
the most lively period of the village, he had never been known to take 
part in the festivities, nor had made his appearance at a “Merry 
Night,” for the last fifteen years — nevertheless, felt himself, after the 
departure of the Excursion-train of his fellow-villagers, lonely and ill- 
used, in not being allowed to participate in the general holiday. The 
consequence was, that Mr. Sandboys’ eloquence was utterly lost upon 
the surliness that had usurped the place of his usual regard and respect 
for his master. 

Moreover, Ann Lightfoot had been unable to get over the loss of 
her “ Jwhonny,” whom, with a jaundiced eye, she saw clattering away, 
in calkered boots, at all the merry nights of London, now standing 
up in many a square-eight reel, or now kneeling at the foot of some 
“ fause-feaced fair,” in the sly vagaries of the Cushion-dance. Under 
these circumstances, she had passed her evenings unusually lonely, 
even for Buttermere ; and having no lover to sit up for at night, she 
had usually spent her leisure time with Postlethwaite, mutually grum- 
bling by the kitchen fire, and filling his mind with ideas and desires for 
London enjoyments, to which he would otherwise have been an entire 
stranger. Accordingly, Ann Lightfoot was as httle inclined as Deaf 
Postlethwaite, and Deaf Postlethwaite as little inclined as Ann Light- 
foot — for the grumblings of the one were echoed in the growlings of 
the other — to be in any way modified by their master’s appeal to their 
feehngs. So Postlethwaite murmured out that they had made up their 
minds to go the next day, without further warning. 

Sandboys, shuddering, saw the coming desolation of his home, and 
for a moment had serious thoughts of calling in the constable to make 
them fulfil their engagements. But, alas, his next remembrance was 
that the constable, like the grocer, and the blacksmith, and the cobblers, 
had gone up to London to see the Great Exhibition. 

The wretched Cui-sty resigned himself to. his fate. But Fate had 
still something woi-se in store for him. No sooner had the servants 
discharged themselves, than Mi’s. Sandboys unmasked a new grievance, 
and opened a full battery upon him, as he sat dismal and desponding, 
in the blanket, sipping his gruel in deep despair. She told him, as 
she handed him the clean shirt she had been airing, that she would ad- 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


31 


vise him to take great care of it — that was the last their stock of soap 
would allow him to have — it might be for months, and she would advise, 
too, him to do, as he had read to her from the newspaper the other day, 
the nasty, filthy Russians did — and grease it all over well, so that he 
might wear it until it dropped off his body, for she could tell him he 
wouldn’t have another until he went to fetch that Harker from the 
Great Exhibition. She did not mind, she told him, so much about 
the loss of her tea — severe trial as that was to her, and requiring all 
her Christian fortitude to bear — the want of beer was little or no 
privation to her — it was the servants — ^the poor, hard-working ser- 
vants that she felt for. The dearth of fresh meat did not affect her — 
it was her dear Elcy’s complexion that she looked at ; she could have 
gone barefoot all her life herself, but the idea of her children going 
about the earth shoeless, realized a wretchedness that she never could 
have imagined when she left her father’s home. 

Still this was nothing — wretchedness was nothing — starvation was 
nothing — shoelessness was nothing, compared with the want of soap — 
she could bear anything but dirt. It was the terror of that had 
kept her from going to London, and now she saw that, in spite of all 
her efforts, Mr. Sandboys’ obstinacy about his trumpery wickedness 
would bring upon her those very horrors which she had made so many 
sacrifices to avoid. She did not care about any of his Great Exhi- 
bitions, only all she knew was, that she would rather go through any 
wickedness than live in the dirt that she could see he was forcing her 
into. Stay in Hassness she would not ; and she had made up her mind, 
as Mr. Sandboys would not leave it, that she would throw heiself on 
Messre. Brag and Steal, and trust to them — for they were her father’s 
lawyei-s — to make him provide her with a separate and comfortable 
maintenance. Dearly as she once had loved him, she loved cleanliness 
more, and it remained for him to say whether they were to continue 
any longer together in the same wholesome state in which they had 
Uved for thirty long yeai-s. And having given vent to her feelings, 
she seized the bed-candlestick and marched indignantly into Elcy’s 
room, where she declared her resolution to pass the night. 

Sandboys, in the enthusiasm of his excited feelings and the sad 
prospect of his threatened widowhood, would have jumped up and 
followed her ; but again remembering the paucity of his attire, sank 
back into his chair. In a few minutes it struck him that he had been 
sitting with his feet in the pail until the water had become as cold 
as that of the brook into which he had tumbled, and he began 
to think that, by remaining in his present position, he was perhaps 
adding another cold to the one he had already caught in his fatal 
attempt at theoretical and practical pig driving. 

For the first time since his wedding-day, Cursty Sandboys was left 
to monopolize the amplitude of the matrimonial feather-bed, and no 
sooner had he rested his nightcap on his pillow, than there began to 
pass before his mind a dismal diorama of all the incidents of the day. 
As he looked upon the picture of the destitution, and desolation, and 
devastation, and denudation of his home, he half-relented of his stern 


32 


1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF 


resolve. For himself and Mrs. Sandboys he feared not the infection 
of the Great Metropolis ; but it was the young and trusting Elcy, 
and the too-ad venturous Jobby — that caused the trepidation of 
his soul. First he thought of the sufferings and the privations 
around him — and then he asked himself whether he were making 
his children and his household suffer these for what was a mere 
whim on his own part. Was not the sacrifice he required too much 
for youthful minds, and was he not once young himself? The reply 
of experience was, that he certainly had been young, but that he 
never had felt any wish to ti’avel further than ten miles from his 
native valley. And as the conflict of affection and determination 
went on in his brain, he now felt assured it was all selfishness on his 
part to keep his children locked up in abstemious solitude — and the 
next moment was declaring that he should be a woman, and worse than 
a woman, if he were weak enough to allow them whom he loved best in 
all the world to be exposed to the vicious allurements of the Great 
Metropolis. Now he was all ice — and now the ice was thawing with 
the brine of his tears — now he was rock — and now, like Hannibal, 
he was cutting a way towards London through his bosom with the 
vinegar of repentance. 

The first thing that met Mr. Sandboys’ eyes in the morning was the 
pair of trowsers in which he had been driring the pig on the previous day. 
Again and again he gazed upon the ruins, for, until that moment, he had 
no definite idea as to the tatterdemalion state of his nether garments. 
The legs hung in long strips down the chair-back, more like shreds of 
list than human pantaloons ; and, as he looked at them, he bethought 
him, for the firet time, that his other pair, which he had just had made 
of his own grey, had been sent a fortnight previously to Johnson, the 
Loweswater tailor, to be altered, by Mi-s. Sandboys, who took a great 
pride in her Cursty’s appearance, and found fault with the cut of them, 
declaring they were not sufficiently tight at the knees, or wide enough 
over the boot, for the last new fashion. 

Sandboys felt it was in vain for a man to talk of independence, who 
was destitute of pantaloons, and, fearing even to speak of the subject 
to his wife, lest a repetition of the previous night’s scene might be 
enacted, sent a private message to his son Jobby, requesting his 
attendance to a conference in the bed-roona. 

. Jobby, when informed of the primitive and paradisiacal condition 
of his parent, chuckled inwardly as he foresaw the dilemma in which 
the disclosure he had to make would place the nether half of the old 
gentleman. Accordingly, when Sandboys confidentially solicited him 
to put on his father’s shoes, and make the greatest possible haste 
over to Johnson for his father’s best trousers, it was with some diffi- 
culty that his son could inform him, with that respect which is due 
to a parent, that, on his last fruitless visit to Brackenthwaite, John 
Cross had told him he was going to call at Loweswater, on his way to 
Carlisle, and take up all the Johnsons, both uncle and nephew, for the 
mail train to London. 

This was more than poor Sandboys expected, and a heavy blow to 


33 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 

him, for he foresaw that the proprieties of life would compel him to 
keep between the sheets, until such time as he could venture to 
broach the subject of his denuded and destitute state to his better 
half. To lie in bed was his only resource ; but to lie in bed was to 
make him more and more sensible of the utter destitution in which he 
was involved. He had received no newspapers for a fortnight, 
and of all things he loved his newspaper the dearest. The loss of 
them in such a state, at such a time, he felt more than all. He might, 
perhaps, have borne the absence of his pantaloons with all the pride 
of martyrdom ; but to be cut off from connexion with the outer world 
of wickedness, in which he took such exti-eme interest, was more than 
human philosophy or mountain stoicism could bear — for what is soli- 
tude without a newspaper ! Here was he, three hundred and one miles 
from London, in a lonely house, without a single “ daring robbery” to 
comfort him, or a “ diabolical murder” to put life into him ! All the 
“successful swindling” of the metropolis was going on without his 
knowledge ; and the excursionists from his native county were, he felt 
satisfied, being plundered, one and all, without his being, as he longed 
to be, in any way privy to it ! 

In this situation, thus contemplating, Mr. Sandboys passed the 
day — a Zimmerman between -the blankets. At last, as the shades of 
night began to shut out Melbrake from before his bed-room window, 
and when Mrs. Sandboys came to his bedside for the basin which had 
contained his thin meal of gruel, as he sat up to receive her he 
humbly petitioned her, with a melancholy shake of the tuft on the 
top of his white cotton night-cap, to allow him one of the old news- 
papers and a light, so that he might relieve his mind by perusing 
some of the trials at the Central Criminal Court ; if he might be 
allowed to choose, he would prefer that Observer and supplement 
which contained those charming twenty columns of the last frightful 
London murder. 

But to make the request was to open afresh the vials of Mrs. Sand- 
boys’ wrath ; for she gave him plainly to undei'stand that, coal-less as 
as they were below, Postlethwaite had been obliged to fell some of the 
trees, and that the holly was so green that she had been forced to 
burn every newspaper in the house in her struggles to make a fire. 
Indeed, were it not that they had mustered all hands, and taken turn 
and turn about at the bellows, every fifteen minutes, all the day 
through, the family would not have been able to have had a mouthful 
of anything warm to eat ; and now that the last double Times had 
gone, she had left Postlethwaite and Ann and Elcy and poor Jobby 
seated round a fireless grate, in the circular drawing-room, pailiaking of 
oatmeal mixed in cold water by way of tea. 

Bitterly conscious of his deficiency as regarded pantaloons, and 
feeling acutely the privation as well as the destruction of his newspapers, 
the otherwise benevolent soul of Sandboys reverted for a moment into 
the primitive selfishness of savage life ; and, seeing no other sorrows but 
his own, he angrily glared on Mrs. Sandboys, and burst out, “ How 
dar’sta, Aggy, burn t’ papers 2” 


3 


34 


1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF 

Mi-s. Sandboys recoiled ! It was the first time she had ever heard 
her dear Cursty address her in such a tone. Her woman’s heart fell, 
and she whimpered out, as she threw herself on the bed, “ I cuddent 
help it, Cursty, an if I cud, thar was nae a candle in t’ house for tha to 
read by.” 

Cursty fell back upon his pillows, and putting his hands over his 
eyes, saw vividly pass before his imagination, his house without candle, 
his servants without fire, his wife without soap, his boy without shoes, 
and himself without breeches ! 

In that one moment he perceived that it was useless to think of 
holding out any longer — London lost its' hon’oi*s compared with the 
privations of Hassness ; so gulping down the cup of bitterness, he told 
his wife he had made up his mind to be off to the metropolis the 
next morning. 

The words were scarcely out of his mouth, when there again 
rose up before his eyes the direful gashes of his inexpressibles — the 
barefooted state of his boy ! But Mrs. Sandboys soon put an end to all 
suggested difficulties, and that evening saw the happy Aggy sitting 
by the bed-side of her beloved Cursty, and, by the light of a lamp 
made out of fat bacon and darning-cotton, sewing away at one of the 
lacerated legs of the trousers, with a light heart, and the strongest 
black thread ; while Elcy was taking the bows off a pair of her mother’s 
shoes, which, at a family consultation, it had been arranged would serve 
to equip Jobby, at least for the walk to Cockermouth, where he and his 
father might, perhaps, be able to provide themselves with necessaries for 
the voyage to London. 

Previous to leaving Hassness the next morning, Mr. Sandboys 
summoned the whole of his family together into the dining-room, and 
addressed thqm in a cheerful though solemn manner, saying he regretted 
to see that, under their late trials, they had evinced an unphilosophical 
want of vivacity, which he considered to be utterly unworthy of the 
hardy natives of Cumberland. He wished it, therefore, to be distinctly 
understood, that he accompanied them to London upon a single 
condition only, and that was — that they one and all made up their 
minds, come what might, to enjoy themselves. 

How the Sandboys got to Town — the misadventures that happened 
to them on the road — the difficulties that the family experienced in 
obtaining shelter when they reached the metropolis — ^how they were 
glad to accept of any wi’etched hole to lay their heads in for the 
night ; and when they did obtain a bed, the trouble that Mr. and 
Mrs. Sandboys found in their endeavours to get their two selves 
fairly into it — the dire calamity that befel them while reposing in it, 
and how excessively hard they found it under these, and many other 
circumstances, to carry out the principle of enjoying themselves, — 
all this, and much more, remains to be told in the succeeding 
chapters of this eventful history. 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


35 


CHAPTER IV. 

" Han’ me that peype, weyfe ! I’ll smuik an’ think. 

Nay, dunnet cry, we ne’er did wrang ; 

The truth I’ll state, whate’er teks pleace, 

To Carel sizes when I gang ; 

We plenty hev, we’ll dui what’s reeght, weyfe. 

An’ whop (hope) heath lang may happy be. 

Now supper’s ruddy, weep nae mair, weyfe. 

Ay fain I’d see a smeyle frae thee .” — Bad News. 

Mr. Sandboys prided himself on being a “bit of a philosopher.” 
His great weakness consisted in his imaginary strength of mind. In 
his college days at St. Bees he had been charmed with the classic 
chronicles of Grecian stoicism and Roman fortitude, and, ever since, 
had been endeavouring to talk himself, out of all feeling and affection, 
into the hero. To his great self-satisfaction, he now believed he 
could bear any stroke of Fate, however severe and unexpected, without 
so much as a wink of his “ mind’s eye,’’ and he flattered himself that 
he had arrived at that much-to-be-desired state of insensibihty which 
would enable him, like a Buttermere Brutus, to hand his own son 
Jobby over to the Carlisle hangman with no more compunction — as 
he delighted to tell that young gentleman, much to his horr<»r — than 
he would take one of his “ lean sheep ” to Lanthwaite Green Fair. 

And yet, truth to say, the heart of the heroic Mr. Sandboys was 
as soft as new bread, though he would have had the world believe 
it was as hard and dry as sea biscuit. If Cursty had any mettle at 
all in his constitution, it was that particular kind of “ fusible alloy ” 
which melts at the least warmth, and loses all consistency immediately 
it gets into hot water. 

No metaphysician has ever yet explained why poor perverse human 
nature always fancies it has a special talent for doing something the 
very opposite to that in which it happens to excel. Doubtlessly, if 
the truth could be known, we should find Sir John Herschel secretly 
regarding himself as a small astronomer, but taking great pride in 
his imitation of frying sausages ; and Faraday thinHng little of his 
discoveries in diamagnetism, but flattering himself that he could palm 
a pea better than any thimble-rigger in the kingdom. Professor 
Owen, for what we know, may despise himself as a comparative 
anatomist, but think far from meanly of his abilities as a player on 
the bones, and Archbishop Whately in his own eyes shine less in 
logic than in the mixture of a lobster salad, or the brewing of whiskey 
punch. 

Even so was it with Mr. Cursty Sandboys ! Naturally kind-hearted, 
and weak almost to an extreme, he conceited himself that he was firm 
and immoveable, amid the storms of life, as a human light-house, or 
as light-hearted and lively in the midst of all his “ ups and downs ” as 
the celebrated old Buoy at the Nore. Nothing he «oveted more than 


36 1851; OR, THE ADVENTURES OP 

decision of character, and yet no man was more undecided. Theoreti- 
cally, he was steel ; but practically, he was only case-hardened with a 
surface of philosophy. 

As he journeyed along the road to Cockermouth, he was busy 
revolving in his own mind the incidents of the previous week. Had 
he allowed himself to be conquered by circumstances ? Had he per- 
mitted the loss of his nether garments to wrest him from his purpose ? • 
Had he, because deprived of the distinctive feature of his “outward 
man,” been led to play the woman ? Had he forgotten all that he had 
been so long teaching himself, and lost all that made Man admirable 
when he lost his breeches ? “ True,” he said, “ Man was but a savage 

without such things — but then,” he asked himself, “might he not 
become effeminate with them ?” 

And as he trudged along the binding Hause, chewing the cud of 
bis thoughts, the Buttermere philosopher got to look upon the ineffable 
part of Man’s apparel as one of the many evils of civilized life — the 
cause of much moral weakness and social misery. If such garments 
were not naturally effeminate, “ why,” he went on inquiring of himself, 

“ should all women have so great a desire to wear them? Were they 
not,” he said, “ the cause of more than half of the conjugal contentions 
of the present day ? — Was not matrimony, generally, one long struggle 
between man and wife as to who should possess these insignia of the 
domestic monarchy ?” 

And "thus the unconventional Mr. Sandboys proceeded in his sar- 
torial catechism, until he got to convince himself that Sin originally 
came into the world with breeches, and that the true meaning of the 
allegory of the apple was, that the Serpent had tempted the great 
Mother Eve with a pair. 

W’hile Mr. Sandboys was thus philosophically reviewing his conduct, 
the more domestic partner of his bosom was mentally “ looking 
after ” the luggage that she had left behind in charge of Postlethwaite 
and Ann Lightfoot, until she could send a suitable conveyance for it. 
Though it had been agreed that the family were but to stay a week in 
the Metropolis, and Mr. Sandboys, knowing that women, when on the 
wing, want the Peacock’s faculty of packing up their fine feathers 
in the smallest possible compass, had given strict injunctions that 
they should take only such things as were absolutely necessary. But, 
primitive as were the denizens of Buttermere, and fkr removed as its 
mountain-fastnesses seemed from the realms of fashion, the increased 
facilities of intercommunication had not failed to diffuse a knowledge 
of Polkas and Crinolines among the female portion of its pastoral peo- 
ple ; so that what with “ best bonnets,” and “ dress caps,” that had to 
be stowed away in square black boxes kept expressly for them — and 
gowns, with so many breadths and flounces, that, to prevent being 
crushed, they required nearly a whole trunk to themselves — and morn- 
ing dresses and evening dresses — and cardinals and paletots — and 
be-laced and be-frilled night-caps and night-gowns — all equally incom- 
pressible — and muffs and tippets — and whiskers and artificial flowers 
and feathers— and bustles and false fronts, that did not admit of any 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 37 

more compact stowage — and bottles of bandoline and perfume — and 
pots of cold cream and lip salve — and writing-cases and work-boxes — 
all and every of which the ladies declared to be positively indispensable 
for the trip ; — what with these things, we say, it was found that by the 
time the pjicking was done, the boxes, and trunks, and portmanteaus, 
and carpet-bags, and hat-cases, and band-boxes, and umbrellas, that 
constituted the family luggage, amounted to no less than three-and 
twenty different articles. Each of these the careful Mrs. Sandboys 
had duly set down and numbered on a card which she carried with 
her, and which she kept continually drawing from her bosom and read- 
ing over as she journeyed along. 

Jobby and Elcy walked in the rear ; the former thinking of nothing, 
but full of what are called animal spirits, skittish as a colt, and 
unable to continue long at any one thing, — now throwing up a stone 
and endeavoring to hit it as it descended through the air, to the 
imminent peril of his mother’s bonnet — -then making “ ducks and 
drakes ” along the lake with small pieces of the mountain slate — the 
next moment aiming at some bird as it skimmed across the water — 
the next, scampering up the hill-side with his sister Elcy’s miserable- 
looking and most unsportsman-like Italian greyhound at his heels, 
starting the mountain sheep — and then descending with several sprigs 
of the “ whin ” or furze bushes in his hand, and stealthily dropping 
them into his father’s coat-tail pocket, in the earnest hope of seeing the 
old gentleman shortly sit down to rest himself by the way on some 
neighbouring crag. 

Elcy, with her eyes moist with teare — though she hardly knew why 
— was too sad to talk, or mind the tricks that her brother played 
with either her father or her poor little shivering pet dog. It was the 
first time she had ever left her home ; and though her woman’s 
curiosity made her long to see London, of which she had heard 
so much, the departure from Hassness was like leaving some dear old 
friend. The mountains, which for so many years she had seen, flushed 
with the young light, “ first thing ” when she opened her eyes in the 
morning, she had got to know and almost love like living things. 
She had watched them under every aspects, — with the white snow 
lying on them, and bringing them so close that they looked like huge 
icebergs floating towards her — or with the noonday sun lighting up 
their green sides, and the shapes of the opposite peaks and cr^s 
painted in black shadow upon them — or with the million stars shining 
in the grey sky above their heads, like luminous dust, and their huge 
dim forms sleeping in the haze of the moonlight, and looking like 
distant storm-clouds rather than solid masses of rock. 

Each of the hills round about had its own proper name, and 
so had assumed a kind of natural personification in Elcy’s mind. 
Every one, to her fancy, was a different being associated with a different 
feehng ; for some she had the same reverence as for the aged, while 
some, woman-like, she half loved for the sense of power they impressed 
her with. And as she journeyed along the banks of the lakes they 
surrounded, and each fresh turn brought some new mountain form into 


38 


1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF 


sight, a dark train of melancholy thoughts swept across her mind like 
tl^ shadows of clouds flitting along some peaceful meadow, and she 
trod the path with the sound of an ideal bell droning in her ears. 

Thus the Sandboys travelled on to the house of John Coss, the 
cobbler post-boy, in the hopes of getting some sort of a conveyance 
over to Cockermouth. But though John Coss was nowhere to be 
met with, they were, luckily, just in time to catch the Loweswater 
post-master, who, finding that all the correspondence in that part of 
the country had come to an end, had stuck up a notice that the letter- 
box at his office would be closed till after the Great Exhibition, and 
was then on his way, in the empty mail-cart, to the Cockermouth 
railway station. 

Once at Cockermouth, the necessary preparations were soon made 
for the Sandboys’ journey to the great metropolis. Jobby was shod, 
Cursty himself was breeched ; Postlethwaite, Ann Lightfoot, and the 
“ things” were duly removed from Hassness, and everything seemed to 
promise that the family really would enjoy themselves at last. 

They were but just in time for obtaining their outfit. All the 
principal gentry and tradesmen had already left the town, and the 
smaller fry were making ready to follow the examples of their bigger 
brethren. The shuttere of the Castle were closed, the mail-coach of 
“ the General ” had been put on the rails and carried to London, with 
“ the Lord Paramount ” shut up inside of it. At Derwent House the 
blinds had all been papered, and the gilt frames and chandeliers put 
into brown holland pinafores, while Lawyer Steel himself had pleaded 
a set-off*, and moved himself, by writ of some kind or other, to the 
capital. The little grey pony, upon whose “body” Coroner Brag 
had so often “sat,’’ had been put upon board-wages at the Globe Inn. 
Doctor Bell and his brother “ Dickey,” the cheerful, smiling, good- 
natured “medical men” of the town, had for a time ceased that 
friendly interchange of commodities which consisted in the giving of 
physic and the taking of wine with their several patients, and finding 
that their invalids had all taken to their “ last legs,” — that the con- 
sumptions had gone galloping off* — and that the declines had suddenly 
got out of “the last stage,” and jumped into the first train, the 
Esculapian Adelphi had felt each other’s pulse, and respectively 
prescribing a few weeks’ change of air for their complaints, had both 
started after their patients, as lively as return hearses. 

Even Jonathan Wood, the quondam Boniface, who, like Atlas of 
old, used to have the whole weight of “ the Globe ” on his shoulders, 
and had supported it till he had positively got red in the face — even 
jolly Jonathan himself had disappeared from the town. “The Sun,” 
too, had lost all attraction to its attendant planets, who, no longer 
gravitating towards it, had flown off* at a tangent to the metropolis. 

But though there vras neither heat nor light in the “Sun,” at 
Cockermouth, still in the interior of the “ Globe ” there was a small 
fire, and here beside the grateful hobs of the cosy hostlery, Mr., Mre., 
and the younger Sandboys located themsekves until such time as all 
was ready for the start. 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


39 


The journey from Copkermouth to Workington per rail is by no 
means of an agi-eeable character. The line being in none of the most 
flourishing conditions, every means for economizing the “working 
expenses” have been resorted to. The men engaged upon it have 
been cut down to boys ; so that the establishment has very much the 
look of a kind of railway academy, where the porters on the platform 
are ever playing at marbles or leapfrog, where the policemen all wear 
pinafores, and where the clerks are taken to the station in the morn- 
ing, and “fetched” in the evening by the maids of their anxious 
parents. We have heard the united ages of the entire staff, but fear 
to mention the small amount, lest a too incredulous public should 
accuse us of magnifying, or rather parvifying the tenderness of their 
yeare. Suffice it that not a razor is used by the whole establishment ; 
and that the “ staff,” — we have it on the best authority — are allowed to 
give over work an hour earher every Saturday evening, in consideration 
of its being “ tub-night.” 

With a further view to effecting that financial refonn which is so 
popular at the present moment, the coal bills of the company recently 
underwent a minute scrutiny, and the important discovery was made — 
after working several very difficult sums — that the heavy amount of 
eighteen shillings and a fi’action weekly could be saved by using 
coals instead of coke ; whereupon a resolution was immediately passed 
by the frugal directors, declaring that nothing but the “ best Lord 
Mayor’s” should thence forth be put into the company’s fires. The 
result of this wise economy has been, that the engines on this line 
are perpetually smoking in the faces of the passengers, and pouring 
forth so lavish a volcanic eruption of “ blacks,” that by the time the 
ladies and gentlemen reach the end of their journey, they are gene- 
rally as dark-complexioned as if they had been unconsciously working 
or reading by the . light of the very best — patent — warranted infumible 
— camphine lamps. 

At Workington, the Sandboys, who, on their arrival, much to the 
horror of the cleanly Mrs. S., might have been taken for a family of 
Ethiopian serenaders, having bleached themselves as well as possible 
with their pocket handkerchiefs — Mi’s. Sandboys standing on tiptoe 
the while to wipe the nasty, filthy blacks from out the wrinkles and 
dimples of her dear Cursty’s face — proceeded to make the necessary 
inquiries touching the continuation of their journey to London. 

At the station, all was confusion and bustle, and noise and scram- 
bling, and be\’sdlderment. Portere in green velveteen jackets, with the 
shouldei’s worn white with repeated loads, were hurrying to and fro — 
some with carpet-bags in their hands — others with boxes on small- 
wheeled trucks, rattling over the flooring through the office. Impa- 
tient groups were gathered close round the pay-clerk — steam-engines 
eager to start were fizzing violently, as if a thousand knives were 
being ground at once — and large bells were ringing quickly to 
announce the arrival of some train which presently came bumping 
heavily alongside the station. Mrs. Sandboys had pursued some 
poi-ter who, much to her astonishment and indignation, had, without 


40 


1861 '; OR, THE J^D VENTURES OF 


a word, walked away with the united luggage of the family, imme- 
diately on its being deposited outside the station door; while Mr. 
Sandboys himself had gone to learn how he and his party were to 
proceed. 

“ Where are you going to ?” rapidly inquired the good-tempered and 
bustling station-master, as he squinted at the clock. 

“ T’ Bull and Mouth, Holborn Hill, London,” answered Mr. Cursty 
Sandboys, giving the whole address of his proposed resting-place in the 
metropolis. 

“ Don’t know any Bull and Mouth at Holborn Hill,” replied the busy 
official, who, called off by the guard, had not caught the last word of 
Mr. Sandboys’ answer. 

“ Dustea say tha dunnet ken t’ Bull an’ Mouth,” exclaimed the 
anxious Cursty, lifting up his bushy eyebrows with evident astonish- 
ment. “ I thowt aw t’ warl was kenning t’ Bull an’ Mouth, Holborn 
Hill.” 

Mr. Sandboys having, during his fii-st and only visit to London 
(whither he had been summoned on a trial concerning the soundness of 
some cattle that he had sold to one of the dealers who yearly visited 
Buttermere), resided with the rest of the witnesses for some ten days at 
the Bull and Mouth Inn, and knowing that it was a place of consider- 
able reputation, could not help expressing his surprise that a pereon 
filling a situation which brought him into almost daily communication 
with the metropolis, should be unacquainted with one of the most 
celebrated of its public inns. 

The Workington station-master, however, unfortunately for Mr. 
Sandboys, referred to a different quarter of the world. The Holborn 
Hill he spoke of, as possessing no Bull and Mouth, was not the well- 
known metropolitan acclivity, so trying to the knees of cab and omnibus- 
horses, where coal waggons and railway vans are continually “ sticking” 
half-way — where “bachelors’ kettles” are perpetually being boiled in 
less than five minutes, and where sheets of gutta percha, like hard- bake, 
and tubing of the same material, like rolls of German sausages, for ever 
meet the eye. No ; the Holborn Hill which the Workington official 
alluded to was an obscure point of land situate at the extremity of the 
county of Cumberland, on the banks of the Duddon, and with not even 
so much as a village nearer than half a dozen miles. Well, therefore, 
might the station-master, thinking only of that Holborn Hill to which 
the Workington trains daily travelled, make answer to the poor 
unsophisticated Mr. Sandboys, that he had never heard of any Bull and 
Mouth in that quarter. 

“ But if you’re going to Holborn Hill, sir,” he added, squinting at the 
clock, “ you’d better be quick, for in another moment the train will be 
off.” 

“ Odswinge ! whilk be t’ carriages, man ?” hastily inquired Mr. 
Sandboys, who had been given to understand at Cockermouth that he 
should have to remain a good half hour at Workington before he 
could proceed on his journey. No sooner was he told where to take his 
seat, than hurrying after his wife and children, he dragged them from 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


41 


the other side of the platform, whither his “ good lady” had followed 
her “things,” and scrambled them despite all remonstrance, into the 
conveyance indicated. 

In an instant after their being seated, the terminus resounded with 
the slamming of the carriage dooi*s — the large dustman’s bell was 
shaken — the whistle was blown — the engine gave two or three long- 
drawn sighs — the carriages creaked with the incipient motion, and 
their intermediate chains rattled loudly as they were successively 
stretched to their utmost length — a kind of hysteric chuckle from 
the engine succeeded, as the wheels slipped round upon the rails — 
then its gasps got shorter and quicker — and then, panting hur- 
riedly, the whole train was borne rapidly along on its way to 
Whitehaven. 

In a few minutes Mr. Sandboys began impressing upon the partner 
of his bosom how fortunate it was that he had taken the precaution 
of checking the information that he had received from those mis- 
chievous boys at Cockermouth by the statements of the respectable 
station-master at Workington. Mrs. Sandboys, however, was in a 
reverie Concerning the fate of her luggage. She had seen that 
impudent fellow of a porter who had seized it and carried it away from 
her, place it, she was confident, in the carriages on the other side of the 
station, for, as she said, she had never taken her eyes off it after the man 
had set hands upon it. 

But Mr. Sandboys assured her that she must, in the flurry and the 
noise, have made some mistake, and that she need be under no appre- 
hension, for the boxes, being all labelled “ London,” would be sure to 
have been placed in the London train. Mrs. Sandboys, in reply, how- 
ever, begged to inform her husband, that the porter had declared that 
the other train was going to London ; upon which, Mr. Sandboys 
observed, that surely the station-master must know better than any one 
else, and it was from that person’s lips he had received the information 
upon which he had acted. 

In little more than three hours from the time of their leaving 
Workington, the railway-train came to a stoppage in front of an 
humble little station, along the platform of which a porter in a north 
country dialect, almost as .strong as his corduroy suit, went crying, 
“ Wha's fwor Hobworn Heel ?” 

“ Here !” shouted Mr. Sandboys, wondering at the rapidity of the 
journey, as he let down the window of the carriage in which he was 
seated, and stared at the surrounding fields in astonishment at the 
extremely rural and uninhabited character of the said Holborn Hill. 
It was nothing at all like what it was when he was there, he said, half to 
himself; nor could he remember any place in the neighbourhood of 
London in any way similar to the desolate district at which he and his 
family were about to be deposited. 

“ Haista ony looggidge ?” inquired the porter. 

“Yes, indeed,” observed Mrs. Sandboys, sidling up to the porter; 
“ three-an’-twenty packages — ^three-an’-twenty packages there owt to 
be, young man.” 


42 


1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF 


Mr. Ciirsty Sandboys kept twisting round about to try and discover 
some object that he could call to mind, and so assure himself of his 
presence in the Metropolis. At last, feeling convinced that, from the 
apparent absence of houses and people, it must be some suburban 
station, he ventured to ask the porter, as he and Mrs. Sandboys accom- 
panied him forward to the luggage-van, how many minutes' walk he 
called it to London. 

The porter stood still for a moment, looked in the face of Mr. Sand- 
boys, and then, without saying a word, burst out laughing. 

Mr. Sandboys, far from pleased at the man’s manner, modified his 
question, and requested to know how many miles he called it to 
London. 

“ Two hundred an’ feafty, if ’t be an inch,” was the laconic reply. 

Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys both heard the answer, and stared transfixed, 
as if electrified. 

Then came the explanation. 

It was as Mrs. Sandboys had dreaded, their boxes, trunks, and bags 
had gone in the direction of Holborn Hill, London, while they, poor 
unhappy mortals, had been carried some fifty miles out of theit road to 
Holborn Hill, Cumberland. 

There was, moreover, a matter of two pounds to pay for the provok- 
ing journey — but it was useless complaining : besides, as Mr. Sandboys 
reminded them, they had all come out to enjoy themselves, and, there- 
fore, notwithstanding the unpleasantness of their position, he trusted 
they would one and all put a smiling face on the matter. 

This, of coui-se, was easier said than done, for on inquiry it was found 
that they must remain in that quarter some few houre before any train 
would arrive by which they would get back to Carlisle — the way they 
had booked themselves to London. 

Having, however, found out where they could get some eggs and 
bacon cooked, they retired to dine away the time, and were soon so 
well pleased with their cheer, that they were able to laugh at their own 

Sandboys, nevertheless, was too intent upon the probable fate 
of her luggage to see much to laugh at in the mistake, while Elcy — 
— ^whose pet Italian gi*eyhound had been locked up in the canine 
department of the London train — could think of nothing but her lost 
darhng. Her whole study of late had been to fatten the miserable, 
shivering, scraggy, half-starved looking little animal upon which she 
had placed her affections. All her benevolence, however, had been 
wasted on the wretched creature. She had put it into flannel 
jackets, but still, to her great annoyance, it was perpetually trembling, 
like a hlancmange'' or a Lascar beggar. She fed it on the most 
nourishirig food, for it cut her to the heart to see the dear look such 
a mere “ bag of bones,” but the fat of the land was utterly thrown away 
on it. It was impossible by any means to give it the least tendency to 
corpulence. Despite all her efforts, its nose continued as sharp as 
a bayonet — ^its legs had no more flesh on them than a bird’s — ^its ribs 
were as visible as if its body were built out of wicker-work — while 


mishap. 

Mrs. 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


43 


its tail was jointed and curled like the flexible tube to a cheap 
imitation of hookah. 

Still there was one consolation : “ Psyche ” could not well be thinner 
— ^had it been a martyr to tight lacing, its waist could not have been 
smaller ; but what effect starvation might have upon such an animal, 
was more than poor Elcy dare trust hereelf to conjecture. She felt 
convinced in her own mind that the skeleton of the poor dear dumb 
thing would be all that she should find of it when she reached the 
Metropolis. 

No such thoughts, however, troubled the brain of her brother, who, 
what with playing practical jokes upon Postlethwaite — teazing his 
sister — coaxing his mother — and exploring the river Duddon, found 
plenty to occupy his time. 

At length the hour for the arrival of the “ up train ” at the Holbom- 
hill station came round, and in a few minutes after, the family were 
being carried swiftly along the road to Carlisle. 

It was night when they reached the Car’el station ; but the Sand- 
boys, unused to travelling, and tired out with the misadventures of the 
day, were all fast locked in sleep. Postlethwaite was the only one 
belonging to them whose eyes were open, but he unfortunately was — 
what he termed, with a natural desire to take the best possible view of 
his infirmity — a “ little hard of hearing so that when the train stop- 
ped, and the porters paced the platform, shouting “ Change here for 
Lancaster ! Change here for London !” not one of the party heard the 
important summons ; but, still dozing, were whirled away, in blissful 
ignorance, towards the capital of Scotland instead of England. 

It was past midnight when the train halted for the collection of 
tickets a little way out of Edinburgh. The letting-down of the car- 
riage-window by the railway officer on the platform roused the still 
slumbering Mr. Sandboys. 

“ Tickets please ! Tickets !” shouted the official, as he turned his 
bull’s-eye full into the face of the yawning, dazzled, and bewildered 
Cursty. That gentleman proceeded with as much alacrity as he 
could, under the circumstances, to draw out from the bottom of his 
purse the several pieces of card-board which had been handed to him 
on paying his fare to town. 

The collector no sooner glanced his eye at the tickets delivered 
to him, than he exclaimed quickly, “ These wont do, sir ! — these here 
are for London, and this is Edinburgh.” 

“Edinburgh!” echoed Mr. Sandboys, his jaw dropping like a car- 
riage dog’s at the sound of the word. 

“ Edinburgh !” repeated Mrs. Sandboys. “ Oh, Cursty — Oh, Cursty, 
what iver ’ull become of us aw.”« 

“ Edinburgh !” cried Jobby, waking up. “ Oh my 1 here’s a lark, 
Elcy.” 

“ Yes, sir, it’s Edinburgh, sure enough,” returned the railway 
official. “ You should have changed carriages at Carlisle.” Then 
holding out his hand to the amazed Mr. Sandboys, who kept rubbing 
his eyes to rouse himself out of what he fancied must be a continuation 


44 


1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OP 


of his dream, the collector added, “ Three pound fifteen shillings, and 
a quarter past nine, sir.” 

“What dustea mean, man, by three paund fifteen shilling, and 
a wharter-past nine ?” angrily inquired Mr. Sandboys. 

“ I thought you asked me what you had to pay, sir, and when the 
next train left for London.” 

“ I did now’t of t’ kind, man ; and I tell tha plain, I wunnet pay 
nae mair. I’se paid aboon twa paunds, an’ been carrud twa hunderd 
meyle out of t’ way awruddy.” 

But Mr. Sandboys soon found all opposition was useless. On his 
leaving the carriage, he was taken between two policemen to the 
station, and there plainly given to understand, that if the money were 
not forthcoming, he would have to finish the night in durance vile ; 
and though Cursty was ready to become a martyr, rather than submit 
to be “ imposed upon,” still Mi*s. Sandboys was of a different way of 
thinking, and reminded him of his determination to enjoy himself under 
all circumstances. 

Mr. Sandboys, after some further expostulation, was prevailed upon 
to do as his wife desired ; and accordingly, having paid the three pounds 
demanded, he and his family made the best of their way to the nearest 
inn, there — “ without a thing to put on,” as Mi-s. Sandboys expressed 
it — to slumber away the houre till morning. 

At a quarter-past nine, the Sandboys family proceeded to make a 
third attempt to reach the Metropohs, and for some time nothing 
occurred to interfere with the progress of their journey. Mr. Sand- 
boys, who, on leaving Edinburgh, had been inclined to believe 
that the fates had declared he was never to get to London, finding 
matters proceed so propitiously for so long a period, had just begun 
to take a more favourable view of his destiny, when, on their arriving 
at Lancaster, a strange gentleman entered the carriage, which he and 
his wife and children had previously enjoyed all to themselves. 

For a while all parties remained silent, — the strange gentleman 
being quietly engaged in examining the Sandboys, while the Sand- 
boys, one and all, did the same for the strange gentleman ; and truly 
the gentleman was so very strange, that the curiosity of his fellow- 
travellers was not to be wondered at. The lower part of his face was 
muffled up closely in comforters, his eyes perfectly hidden behind 
a pair of green spectacles, while his body was enveloped in a lai’ge 
Spanish cloak. On entering he took off his hat, which was one of 
the patent Gibus folding kind, and, pressing in the sides — much to 
the Sandboys’ amazement — brought the crown down to the level 
of the brim. He next proceeded to remove the hair from his head, 
in the shape of an intensely black wig — disclosing, as he did so, not 
a bald, but a closely-shaven crown — and to put a seal-skin cap in its 
place. After this he slid the green spectacles from before his eyes, 
carrying with them the large bushy pair of whiskers which were 
fastened to their sides, and which the moment before had half covered 
his cheeks ; then, discarding his comforteis, he unhooked the clasp 
of his cloak, and revealed the black japan leather of a policeman’s 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


46 


stock, and tlie tight stand-up collar of a superintendent’s undress 
uniform. 

As the strange gentleman saw the whole eight eyes of the family 
riveted upon him, he smiled good-humouredly at their amazement; 
and, turning round to Mr. Sandboys, observed that he perceived they 
were from the country. Receiving a short reply in the affirmative, he 
told them they needn’t be alarmed at his making so different an appear- 
ance from when_ he entered the carriage, for it was part of his business 
to assume a variety of character. 

This set the Sandboys wondering more and more at their fellow- 
traveller ; and the more they marvelled, the more pleased he became, 
smiling and simpering with evident self-satisfaction. At last, ha^dng 
kept them on the tenter-hooks for some short time, he informed them 
that he belonged to the Metropolitan Detective Police, and proceeded to 
give the delighted family a vivid and exciting sketch of his duties. 

Impressed as Mr. Sandboys was with the utter wickedness of the 
city to which he was now rapidly journejdng, this one adventure was 
sufficient, in his mind, to atone for all the previous mishaps of the 
trip, and he eagerly shifted his seat to that immediately opposite to 
the strange gentleman, so that he might get, from one so experienced 
in crime, as full an account of the corrupt ways of London as was pos- 
sible, in the brief space of time that he and his fellow-traveller had to 
remain together. 

In a few minutes Mr. Sandboys, with open mouth, eyes, and ears, 
was listening to an enumeration of the several descriptions of thieves 
common to the metropolis. 

“ You must know, sir,” said his communicative companion, “ there 
are almost as many kinds of bad people as there are good in London ; 
so that I can hardly tell which way to begin. Well, then, let me see,” 
he continued, “ the several descriptions of London thieves are — cracks- 
men, or housebreakers ; rampsmen, or footpads ; hludgers and stick- 
slingei-s, or those who go out plundering with women ; star-glazei*s, 
or those who cut out shop-windows ; snoozers, or those who sleep at 
railway hotels ; buzzei's, or those who pick gentlemen’s pockets ; and 
wires, or those who do the same kind office for ladies — (and here he 
bowled to the alarmed Mre. Sandboys) ; thimble-screwers, or those 
who wrench watches from their chains ; dragsmen, or those wffio rob 
carts and coaches ; sneaksmen, or those who creep into shops and 
down areas ; bouncers, or those who plunder by swaggering ; pitchers, 
or those who do so by passing off one thing for another ; drummers, or 
those who do the same by stupifying pei-sons with drink ; macers, or 
those who write begging letters ; and lurkers, or those who follow the 
profession of begging. These include the principal varieties of ‘ prigs,’ 
or light-fingered gentry, belonging to the Metropolis,’’ said the strange 
gentleman. 

“ Odswinge !” exclaimed Mr. Sandboys, “ but the rogues a’ gotten 
comical neames of their ane. They’d wheer keynd of godfathers, 
m’appen.” 

“ Aye, I shouldn't wonder ! I shouldn’t wonder !” returned Mr. 


46 


1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF 


Sandboys’ companion. “ But many of the classes I’ve just mentioned 
have several distinct kinds of roguery belonging to them, and' the 
generality of them seldom or never attend to more than one branch of 
the profession. For instance, those who devote their attention to rob' 
bing houses, rarely give their minds to picking pockets.” 

“ Odswinge !” exclaimed the delighted, though intimidated Cursty. 

“ Then, again, the buzzer, or gentleman’s pickpocket, is either the 
stook-buzzer, that is, the purloiner of pocket-handkerchiefs, or the tail- 
buzzer, seeking more particularly for sneezers (snuff-boxes), or skins 
and dummies (purses and pocket-books). Occasionally the same pei*son 
may turn his hand to nailing props — that is, stealing pins or brooches ; 
but this, I can assure you, is not considered professional — any more than 
it is for a physician to bleed.” 

Mr. Sandboys lifted his eyebrows in evident wonderment. 

“ So, too, the sneaksman,” continued his experienced informant, “ who 
is the lowest-class thief of all — and a creature with whom the cracks- 
man and mobsman (or tail-buzzer) would no more dream of asso- 
ciating, than a banister would think of visiting an attorney.” 

Cursty’s delight increased as the villanies of each particular class were 
described to him. 

“ These same sneaksmen, I must tell you,” the chatty and sociable 
strange gentleman went on, “ comprise many different characters ; 
among whom I may mention, not only the snoozers or railway sleepers, 
as we call them, and the deud-lurkers, or those who steal coats, &c., out 
of passages, but also those who go snow-gathering, or stealing clean 
linen off the hedges ; and bluey-hunting, or pilfering metal — especially 
lead from the tops of houses ; and cat and kitten-hunting, or abstracting 
pewter quart and pint-pots from area railings ; and sawney-hunting, 
or removing bacon from cheesemongers’ doors ; and going on the 
noisy racket, or purloining crockery and glass from China-sh^ops ; and 
the lady and gentlemen racket, or stealing cocks and hens from the 
markets ; and bug-hunting, or looking out for drunken men. Belong- 
ing to the bouncers and pitchei’s, or those who cheat you out of your 
property instead of positively robbing you of it — if you can under- 
stand the difference, sir — there are the showful-pitchers, or those who 
live by passing bad money, and the charley-pitchers, or thimble- 
riggers, besides the fawney or ring-droppers ; and the flat-catchei’s, or 
those who live by bouncing or besting, that is to say, by getting the 
best of country gentlemen, either by threats, swaggering, or cheat- 
ing.” 

Here Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys exchanged glances of mutual horror. 

“Hence you see, sir, there may be strictly said to be only three 
classes of thieves, namely, the cracksman and the rampsman, who 
constitute what may be termed the thieves’ aristocracy — there being 
usually a certain amount of courage required in the execution of their 
depredations. Then the tail-buzzers and wires may be said to belong to 
the skilled or middle class of thieves ; while the sneaksmen or lurkers, 
who display neither dexterity nor bravery in their peccadilloes, may 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


47 


be Regarded, with the exception of beggars, as the lowest class of 

Ril* 

Mr. Sandboys was charmed to find his theory of the wickedness of 
London, confirmed by so extensive a catalogue of criminals, and he 
got to look upon his informant with a feehng almost amounting to 
reverence. 

^ “ For the pure beggar,” continued the strange gentleman, “ every 
kind of thief has the most profound contempt — even the sneaksman 
would consider himself mortally insulted if placed in the same rank 
with the ‘ shallow cove,’ that is to say, with the creatures that stand, 
half naked, begging in the streets. The bouncers, and pitchers, and 
flat-catchers are generally ranked as a kind of lower middle-class rogues 
— and certainly they are often equal, in ingenuity at least, to the 
buzzers.” 

Mr. Sandboys, who had been drinking in every word of the strange 
gentleman’s discoui-se with the greatest avidity, proceeded to thank 
him, at its conclusion, very warmly for his most interesting statement. 
“Well, I thowt,” he said, “ ’twas nae guid that seame London; but 
odswinge if it doan’t bang t’ Auld Gentleman hissel, that it dui. 
Thee’st seed some feyne geames an’ wickednesses now in thy tyme, I 
suddent wonder.” 

“ Why, yes,” replied his companion, “ persons in our position have 
gi’eat opportunities truly. There are more ways of getting money in 
London than earning it, I can tell you, sir. Indeed, to say the truth, 
industry seems the very mode which succeeds the woret of all there.” 

“ I thowt so ! — I thowt so !” cried Cui-sty. 

“ But still, things aren’t quite as bad as they used to be either. Why 
I remember the days when, regularly every Monday morning, there 
used to be a bullock hunt right through the principal streets of London 
got up by the prigs — and very profitable it was, too. You see, the 
pickpockets would stop the drovei-s on the road, as they were bringing 
their beasts up to Smithfield on the Sunday night — take one of the 
animals away from them by main force, put him into the fii-st empty 
stable they could find, and the next morning set to and worry the 
poor brute until they drove him stark raving mad. Then out they used 
to turn him into the public thoroughfares — start him right away 
through London, and take advantage of the confusion and riot caused 
by his appearance in the crowded streets of the Metropolis, to knock the 
hats of all the gentlemen they met over their eyes, and ease them of 
their watches or purees.” 

“ Well ! well ! well !” cried Mr. Sandboys, throwing up his hands in 
hoiTor at the profundity of the wickedness ; “ Dustea hear, Aggy,” he 
continued, turning to his better half, “ Dustea hear, weyfe ! and we be 
gangin’ to the varra pleace. But tha wast sayin’ that t’ fwok beant 
white so bad now-a-days, sir.” 

“No! no! not quite,” observed Mr. Curety’s companion, “but still bad 
enough, I can tell you. Now, I’ll just repeat to you a trick I saw 
played the other day upon a simple country gentleman UkeyourseE” 


48 


1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF 


“ Varra guid ! but they wunnet catch me, I can tell ’ee.’^ 

“ It’s what is called the Toothache Racket, and far from uncommon. 
Two men, you see, one of whom is provided with two small paper 
packets of salt exactly alike, go into the parlor of a tavern which they 
know countrymen are in the habit of using. The one with the salt, 
who enters some few minutes after the other, pretends to be suffering 
greatly from the toothache. The company observing him to be 
apparently in extreme pain, begin to recommend different cures for the 
complaint. One advises him to rub the gum with brandy — another 
advocates the holding of a little cold water in the mouth — a third has 
never known the oil of tobacco to fail, and so on. The sufferer, 
however, is much obliged to them all, but declares that nothing gives 
himself rehef but a little salt, in a paper similar to what he is then 
applying to his cheek.” 

“ The wicked hypocrite !” involuntarily exclaimed the simple-minded 
Cursty. 

“ Shortly after this he quits the room, leaving his j)aper on the 
table. During his absence his ‘jolly,’ that is, his accomplice, who, 
as I said, came in a little while before the other, begins to laugh at the 
idea of some salt, held outside the face, doing any good to the 
toothache, and says, of course, it’s all the man’s imagination. He 
then proposes to have a bit of fun with the absent invalid, and pro- 
ceeds to empty all the salt out of the paper on the table, and fill its 
place with sawdust.’’ 

“ What’s he gangin’ to be at,” interrupted Mr. Sandboys, deeply 
interested in the tale. 

“ In a few minutes the gentleman with the toothache returns, almost 
raving, and he pretends that the cold air has increased his pain to an 
intolerable degree. He makes a rush to the paper that he had left 
behind, and no sooner applies it to his cheek than he declares the salt 
gives him instantaneous relief ; whereupon the whole room begin to 
titter, and the jolly, or accomplice, as I told you, is well nigh dying 
with laughter as he informs the simpleton it’s nothing but fancy 
that’s curing him, and that there’s no salt at all in the paper. But 
‘ the simpleton’ declares he knows far better, for he filled it himself out 
of the salt-cellar just before he quitted home. The jolly then offers to 
wager him a sovereign that there’s not so much as a pinch in it, but 
the gentleman with the toothache is so certain about the matter, 
that he says it will only be robbing a man to take a bet on such 
a subject.” 

“ The rwogue’s gettin’ honest aw of a sudden,” cried Mr. S., with a 
chuckle. 

“ At last the rest of the company, finding the gentleman so positive 
over the business, get to say they don’t mind being robbed on the 
same terms, and accordingly agree to bet him a sovereign or a crown 
all round, that the paper has no salt in it ; whereupon the gentleman 
with the toothache, who has managed during the laughter at his 
expense to substitute the other packet from his pocket for the one 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


49 


lying on the table, proceeds to unfold the paper — exhibits the salt 
contained in it to the astonished company, and then robs them — as he 
candidly confessed he would — of their money.” 

Mr. Sandboys had now heard so much, that he began to shudder at 
the idea of trusting himself within several miles of such wickedness, 
and felt strongly inclined to propose to his wife' that they should 
return. However, not liking to confess his weakness, he again 
thanked his experienced companion, declaring that he considered their 
meeting one of the luckiest adventures in his life. What he had heard, 
he told him, would at least have the effect of putting him on his guard, 
and he would take good care, now he knew the artful ways of the 
rogues, that none of the London rascals should have an opportunity of 
imposing upon him. 

“Now, there’s another very common trick practised by the flat- 
catchers upon countrymen in London, with the greatest success,” con- 
tinued the loquacious strange gentleman. He should just have time 
to put Mr. Sandboys up to this, he added, before they reached the 
next station, where, he regretted to say, he should be compelled to 
leave him and his charming family. He expected, he said, as he 
poked Mr. Sandboys in the ribs, and winked his eye at him, to fall in 
with a party there whom he had been looking after these many months, 
for nailing a prop with a spark in it. 

Mr. and Mi*s. Sandboys were both extremely sorry to be obliged so 
soon to part with a gentleman from whom they confessed they had 
derived so much pleasure and profit. 

The strange gentleman bowed, and proceeded with the promised 
information. “Well,” said he, “as I before observed, one of the most 
common and most successful of the flat-catchers’ tricks is, to pretend 
to put a countryman on his guard against the rogueries of the light- 
fingered gentry in town. They will tell him long stories, as to how 
the London thieves are taught to practise upon pockets with bells 
attached to them, so that they will ring with the least motion ; and how 
it really is not safe for any one to walk the streets with even a sixpence 
in his possession.” 

“Now, beant it keynd of the villans, Aggy, ehl” said Mr. S., 
jocularly, to his better half. 

“ WTien they have thus disarmed the chawbacon of all suspicion, 
they will begin to show him — as a great secret of course — where they 
keep their money.” 

“ Nae, will they now ?” 

“ Some will let him see how they’ve got it stitched in the waistband 
of their trowsei*s, while others will pull theii*s from their fob, declaring 
they were told by one of the most experienced police-officers that it 
was quite as safe, and even safer, there than if it were sowed to their 
breeches, provided — and on this, sir, I would impress upon you that 
the trick mainly Hes — it is rolled up quite tight, and then shpped into 
the watch-pocket edgewise, in a pecuhar way. Whereupon they very 
kindly offer to put the countryman’s money in his fob, and to stow 

4 


50 1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF 

it away for him as safely as the experienced police-officer had done 
theirs.” 

“ Yes, varra keyndly ! vaiTa ! and preyme and seafe they’ll staw it 
awa’, I’ll be baund.” 

“ Now, if you’ll allow me your purse, sir, for one moment. I’ll show 
you how the whole affair is managed.” / 

Mr. Sandboys drew forth from the pocket of his trowsers the little 
red cotton bag in which he carried his stock of gold and notes, and 
handed it over, as requested, to his fellow-traveller, saying, “ Ise varra 
’bleeged, I’se sure ; an’ how I’ll ever pay tha for all thy guidness, I 
dun net ken. Beant it keynd of t’ gentleman, now, Aggy ?” 

But that lady made no reply; she merely watched, with intense 
interest, the operations of the strange gentleman. 

“ You see,” said that pereon, as he took Mr. Sandboys’ puree in his 
hand, and commenced rolling it backwards and forwards on his knee, 
“ it’s all done by what we call palming. If I intended to deceive you, 
now is the time I should do it ; for while you fancied I was reducing 
the contents of your purse to the 'smallest possible compass, I really 
should be substituting another for it ; and then I should proceed to 
place it all safe for you, thus — ” 

Here the strange gentleman proceeded to lift up the long-waisted 
waistcoat of the grateful Mr. Sandboys, and introduced the small red- 
cotton bag, in which his money was contained, into his fob ; after which 
he gave the pui*se a peculiar twist round, — for in this, he said, the 
London rogues made out that the whole virtue consisted. In reality, 
however, he told him, there was little or nothing at all in it, and it was 
only upon the very simplest people that the trick was ever attempted to 
be practised now-a-days. 

“ Well, I sud say as much, for onie mon cud see through t’ trick wi’ 
hawf an eye,” exclaimed the Buttermere philosopher. 

“ With such a gentleman as yourself, of course, a man would not 
stand the least chance,” continued the stranger ; “ especially after all 
I’ve put you up to ; still the trick, common as it is, and extraordinary 
as I’ve not the least doubt it must stiike a man of your discern- 
ment that it ever can succeed — still, I say, it has one thing to 
recommend it, which is, that the fob is perhaps, after all, about 
the most secure place for keeping one’s money. In crowds or lonely 
places, nothing is more easy than for one man to pinion the arms, 
behind a gentleman, while another rifles his breeches-pockets ; and as 
for carrying either a puree or a pocket-book in the coat-tails — why 
you might as well invest it on one of King Hudson’s railways at 
once ! Whereas, in the fob, you see, it takes so long to get at it, that 
it is not possible to be extracted in that short space of time in which 

street-robberies require to be executed. So, if you take my advice, 

the advice I think I may say, of a pereon of no ordinary experience, 
— you will continue to keep your pm*se in your fob as I have 
placed it !” 

Mr. Sandboys again expressed his deepest gratitude for all the 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


51 


valuable information he had received, and promised to cany out the 
injunctions he had given him. If ever the strange gentleman’s busi- 
ness should lead him to visit Cumberland — though, Mr. Cui-sty said 
with a half laugh, there weren’t much call for the likes of him in that 
“ wharter of t’ warl ” — still, if ever he should be coming towards 
Buttermere, he could only say there would always be a bed and a 
dish of sugar’d cruds and a hearty welcome for him at Hassness. 

The hospitable Cursty had scarcely finished extracting a pledge 
from the strange gentleman to come and spend a month with him 
at the earliest opportunity, when the pace of the carriages began to 
slacken, the panting of the engine ceased, the break was heard grating 
on the wheels, sending forth that peculiar odour which invariably 
precedes the stoppage of all railway-trains. The whistle sounded— 
and amidst the ringing of bells, the Sandboys and their companion 
reached the Preston station. 

Here the strange gentleman having slipped on again the several 
articles of disguise with which he had dispensed on entering, shook Mr. 
and Ml’S. Cursty violently by the hands, and promising to call and see 
them some time or other, he made an extremely low bow to the ladies, 
and in a few minutes was lost in the crowd. 

On his departure, the convei-satioh of Mr. and Mi*s. Sandboys related 
solely to the agreeable manner and vast experience of their late com- 
panion. Cursty’s enthusiasm knew no bounds. His darhng Aggy, 
however, was a little more circumspect in her praise, and did not 
hesitate to confess — that there was something about t’ gentleman 
she didn’t half hke — she couldn’t exactly tell what ; but there was 
something so peculiar in his manner, that for her part, she was not quite 
so much taken with him. He was a very pleasant, agreeable man 
enough, but still — she could not say why — all she knew was— she did 
not like him. And then, as the discussion on their late companion’s 
merits rose rather high, she begged her husband to mark her words, 
for she felt convinced in her mind — indeed, she had a certain kind 
of a presentiment — a strange kind of a feeling that she couldn’t 
describe — and it was no use Cui-sty’s talking — but her impression 
-was — and she hoped Mr. Sandboys would bear it well in mind — that 
they should hear of that gentleman again some fine day ; and that was 
all she wished to say about the matter. 

With this slight discussion to enliven the tedium of the journey, 
the distance between Preston and Manchester passed so quickly, that 
when the collector at the Manchester station called for the tickets, 
Mr. Sandboys could not help expressing his astonishment at the rapidity 
of their travelling. 

“ Now, sir, if you please — quick as you can — show your tickets ; — 
tickets — tickets.” 

Mr. Sandboys instinctively thrust his hand to the bottom of his 
trowsers’ pockets, but then, remembering that the red cotton bag in 
which he had securely deposited the precious vouchers had been 
shifted to his fob, he began a vain attempt to fish up his money-bag. 


52 


1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF 


from the depths of the narrow little tube of a watch-pocket in which 
the strange gentleman had so kindly inserted it. 

“ Now.^ sir, if you please !” again shouted the impatient collector, 
sir !” 

But the more impatient the man became, the more nervous grew 
Mr. Sandboys, and though he worked his fore-finger round and round, 
he could not, for the life of him, lay hold of the desired red cotton 
receptacle. 

At length, with the united aid of Mre. Sandboys and the collector, 
the fob was emptied of its contents, and then, to Cursty’s great terror, 
it was discovered that the strange gentleman, and assumed member of 
the Detective Police Force, had practised upon the unsophisticated 
native of Buttermere the veiy trick against which he was pretending 
to put him on his guard. The purse was to all outward appearances 
the same — the interior, however, consisted of a congregation of whist 
counters and Bank of Elegance notes. 

The mere possession of such articles was in itself suspicious, but 
coupled with the absence of all tickets on the part of the Sandboys 
family, the circumstance appeared to assume so dishonest a character, 
that the collector made no more ado but called a policeman and gave 
the whole family into custody ; saying, they had neither tickets nor 
money in their possession, and that he found on the old one S, whole 
purseful of sham notes and sovereigns; and that he had not the 
least doubt it was a deep laid scheme on his part to defraud the 
Company. 

Mr. Sandboys raved, and Mrs. Sandboys wept ; Miss Sandboys 
intreated, while wicked Master Jobby could hardly contain himself for 
laughter. 

The united battery of the family, however, proved of no avail, and 
the whole six of them, including Postlethwaite and Ann Lightfoot, 
were dragged off to the Town Hall, there to give some account of 
themselves, and urge every reason in their power why they should 
not, one and all, be committed as rogues and vagabonds, for a month, 
with hard labom-, to the New Bailey. 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


53 


CHAPTER V. 


** Hout, man ! what signifies repeynin’, 

Owr grankin’, snifteran’, twistin’, twinin’, 

If down leyfe’s hill we be decleynin’. 

We cannot slack. 

Then gang on decent without wheynin’. 

Or hingin’ back, 

Leyfe, mak’ the best on’t ’s nowght owr pleesin’. 

As every day some fash comes teasin’. 

An’ oft enough the wheels want greesin’. 

To keep them ga’un. 

Then brouce about nor tek sec preesin’ 

To nate our awn.” 

The New Year*s Epistle, 

" There’s sic a gang in our town. 

The deevil cannot wrang them. 

And cud yen gat ’em put i’ prent 
Aw England cuddent bang them. 

« « « j|e « « 

Cheat who cheat can’s the common rule, 

. Fwoaks a’ cheat yen anither ; 

For he that’s nowther kneave or fuol, 

God seake ! what brought him hither.” 

Mr. Sandboys, when he had time for reflection, began to see that 
he was very unpleasantly situated. The circumstances against him, he 
was obliged to confess, when he came to review* them judicially, did 
look particularly black. 

In the first place, he said to himself, he had not only been 
detected travelling without a ticket, and without money ; but, what he 
felt was equally suspicious, without so much as a box, bag, or parcel 
among the whole half-dozen members of his family. If he accounted 
for the possession of the counterfeit coin and notes by declaring that he 
had been imposed upon, still, how was he satisfactorily to. explain to any 
unprejudiced mind that combination <si mischances that had deprived 
him of his luggage ? 

Then, supposing, he went on arguing with himself, he could suffi- 
ciently prove his innocence to the authorities, to induce them to 
abandon the charge against him, what was to become of him ? — in a 
strange town, without a friend, without a shilling — or without a 
change of linen for himself or any of the miserable membei’s of the 
wretched family that looked up to him for protection. 

If he escaped the prison, there was nothing that he could see left 
for him but the workhouse ; and, unsophisticated as he was, still he 
was man of the world enough to know that the workhouse was much 
the worse of the two. 

Waistomea ! Waistomea !” he inwai*dly ejaculated, as he thought 
of his many troubles. 


54 


1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF 


To enliven the teiTors of his position, Mi-s. Sandboys obliged him, 
on the road to the Police-office, by now sketching an imaginary picture 
of the whole family at work on the treadmill, and now painting in the 
darkest colours portraits of hereelf, Elcy, and Ann Lightfoot in the 
female ward of the union, picking oakum, and Cursty, Jobby, and deaf 
Postlethwaite, in the yard of the same wretched establishment, engaged 
in the gentlemanly occuf>ation of cracking stones. 

The only hope, she gave him to understand very plainly, that she 
could see for them was, to get the parish to pass them to their own 
county ; and then, in the depths of her misery, she wished to “ guidness” 
they had remained contented at Buttermere, and never made up their 
minds to enjoy themselves. 

But no sooner had the entire six been crammed into the dock at 
the Pohce-office, and the Inspector cast his eyes towards the chief 
prisoner, than, suddenly recognizing him as a fellow-countryman, 
he asked him whether he remembered one Johnny Wren, who had 
left Buttermere some ten years before, and “listed” in the Life 
Guards. 

This was a piece of good fortune which Mr. Sandboys, seeing how 
unci\dlly the fates had lately treated him, was in no way prepared for ; 
however, Johnny soon removed his fellow-countryman from the dock 
to a seat by his side ; and when he had listened to the series of 
misadventures that had befallen his old friend, he begged of him not 
to worry himself any further about his troubles, as he had a few 
pounds by him, and should be most happy to place the money at his 
service. 

When this bit of good luck had dispelled all the melancholy of 
the family, Johnny himself proceeded to tell Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys 
how, after ’listing in the Guards, he had received an injury while 
riding, and how he had then been presented with a berth in the 
London Police, whence he had been promoted tq the post he at 
present filled in Manchester. 

In a short time Mr. and Mi’s. Sandboys had in a measure forgotten 
all their previous troubles and distresses, in the kindness and hospi- 
tality of Inspector Wren. 

After partaking of such fare* as his establishment afforded, Mr. 
Sandboys proceeded, under the guidance of the Inspector, to take a 
glance round the town. 

Manchester at any time is, perhaps, one of the peculiar sights that 
this country affords. 

To see the city of factories in all its bustle and all its life, with 
its forests of tall chimneys, like huge masts of brick, with long black 
flags of smoke streaming from their tops, is to look upon one of those 
scenes of giant industry that England alone can show. As you pace 
its busy streets, you hear the drone of a thousand steam-engines, 
humming in the ears like a hive. As you sit in your home, you feel 
the floor tremble with the motion of the vast machinery, whirling on 
every side. 

Here the buildings are monstrous square masses of brick, pierced 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


55 


with a hundred windows, while white wreaths of steam puff fitfulljr 
through their walls. Many a narrow thoroughfare is dark and 
sunless with the tall warehouses that rise up like bricken cliffs on 
either side. The streets swarm with carts and railway-vans, with 
drivers perched high in the air, and “ lurrys ” — some piled with 
fat round bags of wool, others laden with hard square stony- 
looking blocks of cotton, and others filled with many a folded piece 
of unbleached woven cloth. Green covered vans, like huge chests on 
wheels, rattle past, — the bright zinc plates at their sides, telling that 
they are hurrying with goods to or from some “ calendar,” “ dyer,” or 
“finisher.” 

At one door stands a truck laden with red rows of copper cylinders, 
cut deep with patterns. This basement or kitchen is transformed 
into the showroom of some warehouseman, and as you look down the 
steps into the subterranean shop, you can see that in front of where 
the kitchen range should stand, a counter extends, spread with bright- 
coloured velveteens, while the place of the dresser is taken up with 
shelves, filled with showy cotton prints. The door-posts of every w'are- 
house are inscribed with long catalogues of names, like those of the 
Metropolitan Inns of Court ; and along the front of the tall buildings, 
between the different floors, run huge black boards, gilt with the title 
of some merchant firm. 

Along the pavement walk bonnetless women, with shawls drawm 
over their heads, and their hair and clothes spotted with white fluflfe 
of cotton.' In the pathway, and at the cornel's of the principal 
streets, stand gi'oups of merchants and manufacturers — all with their 
hands in their pockets — some buried in their coat-tails — othei's plunged 
deep in their breeches, and rattling the money — and each busy 
trafficking with his neighbour. Beside the kerb-stones loiter bright- 
coloured omnibuses, the tired horees with their heads hanging low 
down, and their trembling knees bulging forward — and with the 
drab-coated and big-buttoned driver loitering by their side, and ready 
to convey the merchants to their suburban homes. 

Go which way you will, the whistle of some arriving or departing 
railway-train shrieks shrilly in the ears ; and at the first break of 
morning, a thousand factory bells ring out the daily summons to 
work — and then, as the shades of night fall upon the town, the many 
windows of the huge mills and warehouses shine like plates of burnished 
gold with the myriads of lights within. The streets, streaming with 
children going to or coming from their toil, are black with the moving 
columns of busy little things, like the paths to an ants’ nest. 

Within the factories, the clatter and whirr of incalculable wheels stuns 
and bewilders the mind. Here, in long low rooms, are vistas of card- 
ing-engines, some disgorging thick sheets of white, soft-looking wad- 
ding, and others pouring forth endless fluffy ropes of cotton into tall tin 
cylinders ; while over-head are wheels, with their rims worn bright, 
and broad black straps descending from them on every side, with their 
buckles running rapidly round, and making the stranger shrink as he 
passes between them. On the floors above are mules after mules, with 


56 


1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF 


long lines of white cops, twirling so fast that their forms are all blurred 
together ; while the barefooted artisan between draws out the slender 
threads as from the bowels of a thousand spidere. Then, too, there are 
floors crowded with looms all at work, tramping like an army, and 
busy weaving the shirts and gowns of the entire world, and making 
the stranger wonder how, with the myriads of bales of cotton that are 
here spun, and with the myriads of yards of cotton that are here 
woven, there can be one bare back to be found among the whole 
human family. 

But Manchester, at the time of Mr. Sandboys’ visit, was not the 
Manchester of every-day life. 

The black smoke no longer streamed from the tall chimneys of its 
factories — the sky above was no longer swarthy, as if grimed with the 
endless labour of the town, but clear, and without a cloud. Not a 
cart, nor r van, nor a railway wagon, nor a lurry, broke the still- 
ness of the streets, and the tramp of the policeman on his rounds 
was alone to be heard. The mills were all hushed — the fires were 
out — the engines were motionless — not a wheel whirred — not a loom 
clacked — not a cop twirled, within them. The workers, young and 
old, had all gone to take their share in England’s holiday. To walk 
through the work-rooms that a little while ago had trembled and 
clattered with the stir of their many machines, impressed the mind 
with the same sense of desolation as a theatre seen by daylight. The 
mice, startled at the strange sound of a footstep, scampered from out 
the heaps of cotton that lay upon the floor ; and spidere haii already 
begun to spin their webs in the unused shuttles of the looms. At 
night, the many windows of the mills and warehouses no longer 
shimmered, like gold, with the lights within, but glittered, like plates 
of silver, with the moon-rays shining on them from without. The 
doors of the huge warehouses were all closed, and the steps grown 
green from long disuse. Not a cab stood in front of the infirmary — 
not a vehicle loitered beside* the pavement in Market-street. 

In the morning, not a factory bell was to be heard ; nor a “ buss ” to 
be seen bringing from the suburbs its crowds of merchants piled on 
the roof and packed on the splash-board in front of the coachman. Not 
a milkman dragged through the streets his huge tin can suspended on 
wheels ; nor was a scavenger, with his long loose blue woollen shirt 
and round-crowned hat, to be met with. 

On Saturday night, the thoroughfares clattered not with the tread of 
the thousands of heavy-booted operatives on the pavement ; not a gro- 
cer’s shop was brilliant with the ground-glass globes of its many lamps ; 
not a linen-draper’s window was stuck over with bills telling of another 
“Tremendous Failure” or “Awful Sacrifice!” 

In Smithfield there was neither light nor sound. The glossy 
crockery and glittering glass no longer was strewn upon the ground, 
and no impatient dealer was there jingling his cups and tumblers, 
and rattling his basins to bring the customer to his stand. 
The covered sheds, spread with bright-coloured handkerchiefs and 
muslin, and hung with long streamers of lace, had all disappeared; 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


57 


the long narrow alleys of old-clothes stalls, decked with washed-out 
gowns and brown stays, and yellow petticoats and limp bonnets, were 
gone ; the old-boots stalls, bright with the highly polished shoe, were 
nowhere visible ; nor the black hardware, nor the white wicker- 
b^kets, nor the dangling hairy brooms, nor the glass cases glittering 
with showy jewellery. The booth-like cook-shops were shut up, and 
not a boy was to be seen within them enjoying his cheap basin of 
steaming soup or plate of smoking pie ; and the sheets of tripe, hke 
bundles of shammy leather, and the cow-heels, white and soddened, 
like washerwoman’s hands, had disappeared from the stalls. 

In Victoria Market the oranges were no longer to be seen piled up 
in pyramids, and glittering like balls of gold against their white- 
papered shelves. Not a sound of music was to be heard in any of the 
harmonic taverns. The piano of “ The Hen and Chickens ” was 
hushed. The fiddle and violoncello sounded not in “ The Cotton 
Tree.” At Ben Lang’s the lights were all out, and the galleries empty 
— not a seriously-comic song, nor comically-serious ditty disturbed the 
silence of the “ Saloon.”" 

The shutters of the Exchange, too, were closed — ^none sat at the 
tables, or stood at the desks scanning the papei’s. At Milner’s, 
the patent iron safe that, laden with gold, had stood the attack 
of twenty desperate robbers, was hidden for a time by the shut- 
ters. Barton the stationer had eloped to London with his Love. 
Nathaniel Gould and his brother from London had both returned to 
the metropolis to see the Exhibition, and his mother. Binyons and 
Hunter had given over desiccating their coffee, and had gone to air 
themselves instead, in the metropolis. At Crowther’s Hotel, the 
pretty barmaid was no longer to be seen, for “ The Angel” had retired 
to London. At the Commercial Dining Rooms, Bell’s joints had 
ceased to be hot from twelve till three, for he, like the rest, had gone, 
legs and shouldere and all, to the Great Exhibition ; while Mrs. Ja. 
Stewart (“ professed cook ”) no longer recommended those gentlemen 
who wanted a relish to try her chops. Mrs. Lalor, having exhausted 
“ her winter supply of fancy shirts, braces, cravats, &c.,” had availed 
hei*self of the opportunity of seeing the Exhibition to provide 
hereelf with a summer stock. Mr. Albert, the dentist, of George- 
street, whose “artificial teeth, he assures us, are such perfect imita- 
tions of nature, that it is confidently predicted they will speedily 
supersede every other had started for the metropolis, leaving 

his incorrodible teeth behind him ; and X Casper, the tailor, of 
Market-street, having “ invented a cloth with two distinct faces, which 
may be worn on either side, and suitable for trowsers,” as well as 
coats and vests, had turned his coat like the very-best “ double faced,” 
and gone up in a pair of his own patent pantaloons, with the intention 
of using the outsides for week days, and the insides for Sundays. At 
the City Mourning Establishment, the young ladies of the shop had 
given over sorrowing for the deceased friends of their customers, and, 
substituting lively pink glaces for their sombre bombazines, had sud- 
denly changed, hke lobsters, from black to red, and gone up with the 


68 


1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF 


chief mourner of “ the establishment,” determined to have a few weeks’ 
pleasure, like the rest of the world ; while Beddoe, of the opposition 
depot for grief, had, “ in consequence of the mildness of the season,” 
(coupled with its general healthiness) “not only reduced all his 
stock of the previous winter’s weeds and weepers, but finding the 
mortality much below the usual average, had put up the black 
shutters of his shop, and affixed a hatchment, with the motto of 
“ Resurgam,” over his door, as a notice that he would turn up again 
shortly. 

Not a shop but had some announcement pasted on the shutters. In 
the principal thoroughfares chickens scratched at the unremoved dust, 
while the crowing of rival cocks sounded shrill in the silent streets. 
Corpulent old ducks waddled along the kerb-stones to bathe themselves 
in the gutter. In Market-street the grass was already beginning to 
sprout between the stones. The cats, left to take care of themselves, 
wandered about as thin as French pigs, and lay in wait for the birds, 
that no longer scared by the noise, now began to flock and twitter 
loudly in every thoroughfare. In the People’s Parks, pigs roamed 
among the flowers, while geese and donkeys nibbled at the gi*ass. 

There was, however, one quarter of the deserted town where the 
people were not holiday making, but still labouring — for what was 
to them, indeed, dear life — one district where the toil knew no 
cessation — where the workmen had no money to spend on pleasure, 
getting barely enough — slave as they might — to keep soul and body 
together. 

Round about the wretched purlieus of Rochdale-road the clicking of 
the shuttles of the handloom weavers might still be heard. . Early, 
long before the light, and long after the dark, the weaver’s dim lamp 
might be seen in the attic or cellar, and where some five-and- 
twenty were styed together under one wretched roof, Mr. Sandboys 
was led by Inspector Johnny Wren. 

At the top of the house he found the rooms crowded with crazy 
old looms, so that it was scarcely possible to move between — and here, 
with beds of sacks of straw, and nothing but their own rags to cover 
them by night, were a band of grim, hollow-cheeked, and half-starved 
men, toiling away for a crust — and nothing more. 

Mr. Sandboys started back in horror as he looked at the pinched 
faces and gaunt figures of the workers. He asked why they were not, 
like the rest of the town, at the Exhibition of the Industry of all 
Nations. 

“ Ha ! ha ! ha !” laughed out one with a week’s beard on his chin — 
“ last week I earnt three and ninepence, and this week I shall have 
got two and a penny. Exhibition of Industry ! let them as wants to 
see the use of industry in this country come and see this here exhibi- 
tion.” 

“ I’ll warrant it’ll beat all nations hollow,’’ cried another. 

And then the man laughed again, and so did all his fellow-workers, 
in a grim, empty-bellied chorus. 

Mr. Sandboys grew somewhat alarmed at the man’s manner, and 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


59 


not finding much gratification in the contemplation of misery that he 
knew it was out of his power to mitigate, beckoned Inspector Wren 
away, and made the best of his road back to the house of his fellow- 
countryman. 

Ml'S. Sandboys had been anxiously awaiting his return for some time. 
During the absence of Cui*sty, she had half made up her mind to return 
to Hassness ; and would have decided upon doing so immediately had 
it not been for the loss of the luggage. 

Mr. Sandboys, however, now that he had wholly forgotten his late 
troubles, was in no way desirous of giving way to what appeared to be 
simply a small concatenation of adveree circumstances. Besides, now 
that he saw matters were taking a more propitious turn, he began to 
feel all his heroism returning ; and having made up his mind to enjoy 
himself for a short period in the metropolis, why he would not allow it 
ever to be said that he was weak enough to be wrested from his purpose 
by a few mishaps. 

His darling Aggy, however, thought far less of the heroism than 
she did of her boxes ; and seeing the imminent peril in which she 
stood of being deprived of the entire three-and-twenty packages 
which contained the family linen and all their best clothes, besides a 
sufficiency of notes to cover, as she and Cui*sty had calculated, all their 
expenses in town, why she agreed with her lord and master that,' 
under all circumstances, it might perhaps be advisable to avail them- 
selves of the kind offer of Mr. Johnny Wren to advance them money 
enough to carry them on until they could obtain their boxes from the 
railway station. 

Mr. Sandboys being of the same opinion, consulted privately with his 
friend Johnny Wren as to the andount he could conveniently spare 
them ; and all the money mattei-s having been satisfactorily arranged, 
the Sandboys family started once more on their journey, determined 
this time, at least, to enjoy themselves. 


60 ' 1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OP 


CHAPTER VI. 

“ Now fifty shwort years ha’e flown owre us. 

Sin’ first we fell in at the fair. 

I’ve monie a teyme thowt, wi’ new pleasure, 

Nae weyfe cud wi’ Aggy compare ; 

Tho’ thy nwose has gi’en way to the wrinkle. 

At changes we munna complain ; 

They’re rich whea in age are leet hearted, 

' An’ mourn nit for days that are geane.” 

The Days that are geane. 

We us’d to go to bed at dark, 

And ruse agean at four or five ; 

The mworn’s the only teyme for wark. 

If fwok are hilthy and wou’d thrive. 

Now we git up — nay, God kens when ! 

And nuin’s owre suin for us to deyne ; 

I’s hungry or the pot’s half boiled. 

And wish for teymes leyke auld lang seyne.” 

Lang Seyne. 

At length the Sandboys reached the Metropolis without any further 
misadventure than being informed, on their arrival, that there was not 
a bed to be had within five miles for love or money. 

On reaching the Bull and Mouth, to their great astonishment they 
found a large placard exhibited, inscribed with the following terrible 
announcement — 

“The beds here are quite full.” 

Mr. Sandboys, however, was not to be deterred ; and, entering the ' 
establishment, he sought for some one whose face he might remember 
having seen on his previous visit. The head waiter no sooner entered 
the coffee-room in answer to his summons, than he recognised the 
face of the old attendant, and besought him to recommend him to 
some place where he might obtain a bed for a night or two at the 
least. 

The only place that the waiter knew, as promising the remotest 
chance of accommodation, was at the' residence of a lady, who, he was 
informed, had been recently extending the conveniences of her esta- 
blishment; and then, handing to Mr. Sandboys the lodging-house- 
keeper’s address, he whisked his napkin under his arm, and, pulling his 
front hair, departed with all the elegance of a head-waiter at an old- 
fashioned establishment. 

Arrived at the residence of the lady indicated by the gentleman 
who superintended the supply of provisions to the inmates of the 
Bull and Mouth, Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys were asked to step into the 
passage (the lady apologizing for the parloure being both full), and 
there Mrs. Fokesell, whose husband, she was happy to say, was at sea, 
informed them to their great horror, that she had only one hammock left 
unoccupied ; and if the lady and gentleman thought they could make 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


61 


shift in that until such, time as they could meet with anything better, 
why it was at their service for five shillings a night. The young lady 
and the female servant Mrs. Fokesell might perhaps accommodate in her 
bed, and if the footman wouldn’t mind lying on the knife-board, and 
the young gentleman thought he could pass the night comfortably on 
the top of the grand piano, why she would do everything in her power 
to make them comfortable. 

Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys said that, under the circumstances, they 
must consent to avail themselves of whatever they could get ; where- 
upon the landlady politely informed them, that if they would follow 
her down stairs, she would show them the only apartment she had to 
spare. 

But as she was about to descend, a loud single knock was given at 
the street door, and, begging their indulgence for a minute, she returned 
to the passage to ascertain the business of the new-comer. On answer- 
ing the knock, she found that it was merely the coal-merchant, who 
wished to be informed when she would like to have in “ them there 
coals as she ordered.” 

Mrs. Fokesell hastily told the man, that if they weren’t delivered 
the first thing in the morning, there wouldn’t be a bit of fire to “ bile 
the dozen pots of shaving-water as was wanted by eight o’clock for 
her lodgers.” 

On closing the door, and rejoining Mr. and Mre. Sandboys, who still 
stood on the top of the kitchen stall’s, Mi-s. Fokesell led the way 
to the basement, and, opening the kitchen door, stepped across the 
area. Stopping in front of one of the two dooi^s that led to what 
the landlady was pleased to dignify by the name of a humble apart- 
ment on the basement floor, she unfastened the padlock, and revealed 
the interior of a cellar, from the arched roof of which was slung a 
sailors’ hammock, while on the floor was spread a small square of 
dingy carpet. In one corner, on top of a beer-barrel stood an apparatus 
that did duty for a toilet-table. Against the whitewashed wall hung a 
small sixpenny shaving-glass ; while, immediately beneath it there was 
placed a dilapidated chair. 

Mrs. Sandboys, who until that moment had never set eyes on that 
peculiar kind of naval contrivance for obtaining a night’s rest under 
difficulties, could not refrain from expressing her firm conviction that 
it was utterly impossible for any woman of her size to deposit herself 
safely in the interior of that thing, which people were pleased to call 
a bed. 

Mrs. Fokesell, however, begged to assure her that she had passed 
many — many very pleasant nights in that very hammock, and with 
the aid of the trestle which she had placed on the floor, and an assisting 
hand from her husband, she was sure the lady would be able to manage 
very well. 

Mr. Sandboys himself was anything but pleased with the arrange- 
ments of the proposed dormitory, and, secretly in his o\\ti mind, 
he was inquiring of himself how, when he had lent the said assisting 
hand to his better half, and safely lodged her within the depths of the 


62 


1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF 


suspended hammock, he himself was ever to join her there, for who, 
he wanted to know, was there to perfomi the same kind office for 
him ? 

However, even if they had to take the bed down, and spread it on 
the carpet, it would, thought Mr. Sandboys, be far preferable to none 
at all, so he told Mrs. Fokesell that he and his good lady would avail 
themselves of the accommodation, at least for that one night. 

“ It’s all I have, ma’am,” said the landlady ; “ I’ve just let the last 
tent on the tiles to a foreign nobleman, and seven shillings a night 
is what I has for him. I assure you it’s a fact, ma’am. There 
is not a foot in a respectable house that is not worth its length in 
sovereigns, ma’am. Why, if you’ll believe me, ma’am, there’s my 
next-door neighbour, she’s put a feather bed into her wann bath, and 
let it off to a young East Injun at a guinea a week, for a month 
certain.” 

Mr. Sandboys, exhausted with his journey, made no more ado, but 
closed the bargain with Mrs. Fokesell ; and, having partaken of some 
fried chops, by way of supper, in the kitchen, he and his beloved Aggy 
withdrew to the privacy of the cellar which was to constitute their bed- 
chamber for the night. 

After a brief consultation it was agreed that to prevent all chance of 
taking cold in so damp a dormitory, they should retire to rest in their 
clothes ; and Mrs. Sandboys having disengaged herself of her hood and 
cloak, prepared to make the perilous ascent. 

By the aid of her Cui-sty’s hand she mounted the little trestle of the 
beer-barrel, which she previously placed immediately under the ham- 
mock, and then, turning her back towards the suspended bed she 
managed, with a slight jump, to seat herself on the extreme edge of the 
sacking. Her figure, however, being rather corpulent, the weight of 
her whole body no sooner rested on one side of the oscillating couch, 
than the whole apparatus slid from under her, and she was suddenly 
plunged down on the corner of the temporary toilet-table. Fortunately 
for the good lady, the top of the artificial wash-hand-stand consisted of 
a board merely laid aci’oss the head of a barrel ; so that immediately 
she touched the ricketty arrangement, the board, basin, and pitcher were 
all tilted forward, and the entire contents of the water-jug emptied full 
into her face, as she fell to the ground. 

What with the crash of the crockery, the splashing of the water, and 
the bumping of poor dear Mrs. Sandboys on the carpet, Curety was 
almost paralyzed with fright. He was afraid even to raise his darling 
Aggy from the ground, for he felt that something serious must have 
happened to her. 

But Mrs. Sandboys luckily was sound in her bones, though severely 
bruised in her flesh ; and as Cursty helped her up from the floor, she 
shook the water from her hair, and vowed that she would rather sleep 
on the carpet all night, than make another attempt to enter that nasty, 
deceitful, swinging, unsteady thing of a bed. 

Mr. Sandboys used all the endearing arts of which he was 
master to induce the partner of his bosom to make a second attempt 


MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS. 


63 


but his entreaties were in vain ; for Mrs. Sandboys, whose body still 
tingled with the failure of her previous essay, was in no way inclined to 
listen to his solicitations. 

But the persevering Cursty pleaded so hard that at last he got her 
to consent, that provided he would fii-st get into the hammock himself, 
and would lift her into it after him, she wouldn’t mind obliging him in 
that way — for she could see no other plan by which she was ever to be 
safely deposited within it. 

Accordingly, Mr. Sandboys, when, after a few unsuccessful but harm- 
less endeavours, he had managed to get his entire body fairly into the 
sailor’s bed, leant over the side in order to assist his better half to join 
him within it. But on putting out his arms to lift the lady up to 
the required height, the delusive, bendable bedstead turned inside out, 
and shot him, mattrass, blankets, and counterpane, together with his 
Aggy, plump on to the ground. 

The fall shook Mr. Sandboys almost as much as when the pig had 
laid him on his back in the brook, and it was long before he could bring 
himself even to propose to his wife to make another attempt to enter 
the wretched, wabbling, swingy substitute for the substantial security of 
a four-post. 

At length Mrs. Sandboys, who two or three times had just 
saved hei-self from falling almost flat on her nose while dozing in the 
dilapidated chair, began to be fairly tired out ; and Cursty, who had 
sat on the top of the beer-barrel till his legs were nearly cut through 
with the sharp edge of the hoop, found that it was impossible to con- 
tinue his slumbers in so inconvenient a posture, so he took his fat and 
dozing little wife in his arms, and standing once more on the trestle, 
fairly lifted her into the hammock ; after which, seizing the chain that 
hung from the iron plate in the pavement above, he with one desperate 
bound swung himself by her side into the- hammock. 

In a few minutes they were both fast locked in slumber ; but 
Cursty’s repose was destined to be of short duration ; for soon Mrs. 
Sandboys, shaking him violently, roused him from his rest. 

“ Up wi’thee ! — up wi’thee ! thar be summet beasts a-crawhng 
ower my face, Cursty. Ah, these Lon’on beds ! We’ll be beath 
yeeten up, aleyve, if thee staps here, Curety !” 

And so saying, she gave her lord and master so stout a thrust in 
his back, that drove his weight to the edge of the hammock, and again 
brought him rapidly to the floor. 

. Mrs. Sandboys in her fright soon followed her husband ; and then 
nothing would satisfy her but she must have the whole of the bedding 
and clothes turned out on the ground, and minutely examined by the 
hght of the rush'light. 

But Mr. Sandboys, already deprived of the half of his night’s rest, 
was in no way fit for the performance desired by his wife ; and, in 
order to satisfy her qualms, he proposed that the mattrass alone 
should be replaced in the hammock, and then she need- have no fear. 

Mrs. Sandboys was herself in no humour to hold out against so 
apparently rational a proposal ; and, having consented to the compro- 


64 


1851 ; OR, THE ADVENTURES OP 


mise, there began the same series of arduous and almost perilous 
struggles to ensconce their two selves once more in the interior of the 
hammock. 

After several heavy tumbles on both sides, and breaking the rusty 
iron chain which served to hold down the circular trap in the pave- 
ment above, the worthy couple did ultimately manage to succeed 
again in their courageous undertaking ; and then, fairly exhausted 
with their laboui-s, they closed their eyes just as the blue light of day 
was showing through the cracks of the coal-cellar door. 

The Cumberland couple had continued their rest undisturbed some 
few hours, when Mi’s. Sandboys was aroused by hearing the circular 
iron trap moved above her head. She woke her husband with a 
violent shake, telling him, as soon as she could make him understand, 
that she was sure some of her friends, the London thieves, were pre- 
paring to make a descent through the pavement into their subterranean 
bed-chamber. 

Mr. Sandboys was no sooner got to comprehend the cause of her 
alarm, than he saw the end of the chain lifted up, and the trap 
removed from the pavement above them. 

Instinctively the couple rose up in their bed, and leant their heads 
forward to ascertain the precise nature of the impending danger. 
Suddenly they were startled by a gruff voice from above, shouting 
“ Bee-elow,’’ and immediately there descended through the round hole 
at the top of the cellar a shower of large and small coals, the noise 
of which completely drowned their cries, and beneath which they were 
almost buried alive. 

Before they could extricate themselves fr’om the black mass that 
nearly filled their hammock, a second shower of Walls’ End was 
poured down upon them ; and had it not been for the landlady observ- 
ing from the kitchen that the coal-porter was about to shoot the half 
ton she had ordered on the previous evening to be delivered early that 
morning into Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys’ hammock, that worthy couple 
assuredly must have perished in the dusty, grimy avalanche. 

Mrs. Fokesell rushed into the area, cried out loudly to the man to 
hold back the third sack, which he had just poised over the hole on 
his shoulder, previous to discharging its contents on the bodies of the 
unhappy Sandboys, and tearing open the door, delivered the blackened 
and the bruised couple from the perils of their wretched situation. 


THE LIFE OF 


JJiKQKa^ 

THE SWEDISH NIGHTINGALE, 

HER GENIUS, STRUGGLES, AND TRIUMPHS. 

BY C. ,G. ROSENBERG, 

Formerly Musical Critic of the London Morning Post 

EMBELLISHED WITH A PERFECT LIKENESS, 

BEAUTIFULLY ENGRAVED ON STEEL. 


Among the contents of this truly inter 

Her Birth and Childhood. 

Her Early and Singular Success at Stock- 
holm. 

The Loss of her Voice and the Girl’s 
Despair. 

Her residence at Paris, under the tuition 
of Garcia. 

Her First Meeting with Meyerbeer, the 
Composer. 

Her Engagement at Berlin. 

The Sudden Recovery of her Voice and 
her Marvellous Success. 

Public Rapture on her First Appearance 
in Vienna. 

The Student and Jenny Lind. 

Her Triumphant Entry into Stockholm. 

Her Engagement with Mr. Bunn. 

Single copies 25 cents ; five copies to 
executed. 

STRINGER i 


iting work are ; 

Her Appearance at the Rhenish Festival. 

Her Presentation to Queen Victoria by 
the King of Prussia. 

Her Appearance at her Majesty’s Theater, 
London. 

Her Extraordinary Success. 

The Poor Cottager and Jenny Lind. 

Wonderful Success in the Provinces. 

Jenny Lind and the Ventriloquist. 

Her Second Visit to Vienna. 

Return to England. 

Her Appearance at Exeter Hall in fur- 
therance of the Mendelssohn Scholar- 
ships. 

Her Engagement with Barnum to Visit 
this Country, &c., &c. 

le address, $1. Orders by mail promptly 

TOWNSEND, Publishers, 

222 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. 


LETTER FROM P. T. BARNUM. 

Messrs. Stringer & Townsend, — 

Gentlemen : — I feel greatly obliged by your kindness in having sent me the proof-sheets of your 
forthcoming “ Life of Jenny Lind.” I have perused them with much satisfaction, and assure you that, 
interested as I am in all that concerns this distinguished lady, and consequently having read all that 
has been published, and learned all in my power in regard to her history, I have never hitherto read 
anything which so completely puts us in possession of all the interesting details of her life, as the 
work before me. 

The authenticity of the entire work none can doubt who know anything of her history. 

The beautiful Portrait on Steel of this distinguished songstress, which you have had engraved for 
the frontispiece, is a wonderfully exact copy of the best likeness ever published of her, and is amply 
worth four times the trifling sum charged for your book. 

Truly your obedient servant, 

P T. BARNUxM. 

Iranistan, near Bridgeport, Ct., April 26, 1850. 


V 


LIBRARY OF CONGRESi 



_ 0 002 170 630 9< 

THE INTERNATIOi>^a. ^ 





The publishers of The Internatioxal Monthly Magazine felicitate themselves upon the unex- 
pected success of the work, which appears everywhere to be received with approbation, as its circu- 
lation has in the last month increased with unexampled rapidity. They beheve the present number 
will be found not less attractive than the best of its predecessors, and they renew the assurances they 
have heretofore given, that they will fail of no endeavors to make The International the most attrac- 
tive, most usefnl, and, in all respects, the least objectionable hterary miscellany for the family or the 
study, that is published in America. 


Extracts fQ-om late revieics of the “ International,” culled from hundreds received 

during the month. 


Prom the New- York Commercial Advert iser Y 
One pleasing trail in this magazine we have before 
briefly noticed. We refer to the great amount of literary 
and general intelligence which the editor collates, or con- 
tributes to its pages. We have noticed it in some numbers 
in such liberal quantity as to form quite a distinctive feature. 
A large proportion of this, too, is purely national— Ameri- 
can. To readers dwelling in the country aw'ay from large 
cities where such informarion is more easily obtaineil, 
this, we conceive, must be a valuable and entertaining fea- 
ture of the work. We scarcely need say, that it is indica- 
tive not only of editorial industry, but of acquaintance with 
literature and literary men of extraordinary extent, and of 
an enlarged sphere of reading. The information thus sup- 
plied to the readers of this magazine, although prominently 
national, is also thoroughly cosmopolitan, and supplies a 
history of events — a table of the “ World’s Progress” — that 
it is exceedingly desirable to know and to have on record 
lor occasional reference. Readers of this journal are aware 
that the selected reading matter of the International Maga- 
zine is mainly taken from the higher class of European 
periodical literature, — upon which much of the first talent 
IS now expended, — and from popular books not yet pub- 
lished in this country. The extensive re.sources end con- 
nections of the enterprising publishers afford them great 
facilities for such selections, and it is but Justice to say that 
they are uniformly made with excellent judgment. Now 
we can conceive of cases where the value of such a publi- 
cation as the one before us can scarcely be over-estimated. 
Take, for instance, an intelligent educated family, resident 
in the country, with but moderate pecuniary means and 
perhaps less leisure, but feeling that yearning desire to 
know what is going on in the every day literature of the 
world, which is always evolved by the combination of intel- 
ligence and education. Newspapers alone will not satisfy 
such a family, while for the perusal of the love tales and 
fugitive creations of the more ephemeral serials they have 
no relish. They would like some friend with leisure to 
pick out from the host of books what is worth reading, and 
especially would they like an intelligent person to spend 
an evening with them often, and while they follow their 
indoor occupations, tell them all about authors and their 
books, intermingling therewith the particulrrs of any new 
discovery in science or illustrations of advancement in art. 
.lust such a friend will they find in the work before us, 
whose society they may have for a month, and his perma- 
nent acquaintance thereafter, for the trifling sum of twenty- 
five cents a month, or ih ee dollars a year. 

From the “ Charleston Daily Snn." 

It is replete with interesting and instructive articles, and 
is so far superior to the trash that emanates from the 
Northern press under the name of Godey’s, the Ladies’, 
Sartains, &c. tliat we really are surprised that any one can 
hesitate in making his choice which to patronize. 

From the “ Bunker Hill Aurora.’- 
This is one of the very best magazines in the world. 


From the Mobile “ Daily Advertiser.” 

In this age of cheap literature, when authors are hired 
to prostitute their pens in pandering to the vitiated public 
taste, and our book-stores are filled with works of refined 
sensuality or sickly sentimentalism, it is refreshing to find 
some one enterprising and spirited enough, even if actuated 
by no better motive, to establish a periodical, whose effects 
have a tendency to counteract the evils which such publi 
cations are working. The diffusion of knowledge among 
the masses has always been the object of philanthitipic men, 
and we have seen nothing more likely to assj-st in this 
great work, than a monthly serial, entitled tlie “Inter- 
national Magazine.” Here we are treated to the best 
thoughts the ablest minds can produce, no matter whaf 
language was used as the vehicle of their expression. 
Translations rendered with tmth and clearness; selections 
made with taste guided with judgment; abridgments which, 
without impairing the force of the author,^ontain all that 
is truly valuable to the general reader, xiie amount of 
reading given in each number is so large, that something 
can be introduced interesting to all. Biography, the fine 
arts, history, general literature, &c., each have their respec- 
tive departments, and while the solid and useful are well at- 
tended to, sufficient light reading of a standard cha'-acter is 
introduced to give spiciness and variety. Three numbers 
of this maeazine have been issued, and the October number 
is now before us. Its longest article is a life of Edgar A. 
Poe, by Griswold. We cannot but acknowledge that it 
gives an impartial estimate and true appreciailoh of the 
character of this singular and erratic poet. It would too 
much extend our limits to notice the many valuable papers 
this periodical contains. For him who can devote but little 
time to reading, it is invaluable, and its cheapness should 
place it in every family who desire mental and intellectual 
cultivation. 

From the “ Netv- York Tribune.” 

The selections from foreign periodicals are made from a 
wide range of materials, and with excellent adaptation to 
the general taste of readers. The departments entitled 

Authors and Books,” “The Fine Arts,” “Music and the 
Drama,” and “ Recent Deaths,” are conducted with indus- 
try and success, and are, in all i nspects, creditable to the 
ability and affluent resources of the experienced editor. A 
great amount of information with regard to European liter- 
ature and art is derived from sources not easily accessible, 
and presented in a very readable shape. 

From the “ Belvidere Intelligencer.” 

We certainly regard this periodical compilation as one of 
the best — if not the best — of its class. It has the advantage 
of Harper’s in presenting a much more perfect resume of 
the present stale of the literary world, and in drawing its 
materials from the br<iad continent of Europe, as well as 
from the pent-up British isles. 

From the “ Pittsburg Saturday Visitor.” 

Though it belongs to the class of “ cheap literature,” it is 
not cheap “ trash.” 


i 


To Persons forming Clubs. — All money received for subscriptions will he credited according to / 

^ ' i- I 


the following rates, and the Magazines promptly forwarded on receipt of the money : Single subscri 
hers, $3; two copies, $5 ; five copies. $10. | 




